living feature
Pop-Up Health and Community Services Event
Wednesday, June 28
3 p.m. – 7 p.m.
Nord-Bridge Seniors Centre, 1904 13 Ave. N.
Everyone is welcome to attend – no one is turned away.
Services are provided at no cost.
Web: impactresearchprogram.com/alberta
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 403-795-3934
Pop-Ups mean
participants can access
a number of health services
in one place on one day.
32 LETHBRIDGELIVING.COM
Innovative Models Promoting Access-
to-Care Transformation (IMPACT) is a
five-year, international research project that
started in 2013 to create sustainable models
of access to primary health care for vulnerable
populations. Included in the project are
three cities in Australia and three cities in
Canada, one of which is Lethbridge. A team
of researchers, community stakeholders,
and health care providers from Alberta
Health Services, University of Lethbridge,
and PolicyWise for Children & Families
looked at our region and worked together to
identify a need or barrier keeping vulnerable
populations from accessing primary health
care, and then break that barrier down.
“Health care in [IMPACT’s] view is much
less about hospitals, and much more about
supporting people in communities where
they live, and work, and play,” says Shannon.
When the IMPACT team in Lethbridge
started to analyze the publicly available data,
it quickly became apparent that there was a
dire need on the city’s north side for access
to almost all primary health care services,
not only due to a lack of those services
located on the north side, but also because of
socioeconomic factors, material factors, and
social factors. It all pointed to a population
that had hindered access to health care
services.
M AY- J U N 2 0 1 7
Lethbridge’s IMPACT team:
Shannon Spenceley, Jillian Barnes,
Stasha Donahue, Roy Pogorzelski,
and Ryan Mallard.
Missing are: Cheryl Andres,
Jerry Firth, Lisa Halma,
Kristina Larkin,
Drake McCheyne,
John Pickles,
Lindsey Stella,
Treena Tallow, and
Grant Walker.
Once north Lethbridge had been
identified as the region with the highest
need, the next challenge was how to address
the lack of health care services and how to
enhance access to those services. “In deciding
what we needed to do in terms of looking at
access, we needed to start to identify what
were the key issues around access, and what
were the best solutions for improving that
access,” explains Cheryl Andres, Primary
Care & Chronic Disease, Alberta Health
Services–South Zone.
After holding engagement sessions with
community stakeholders, health care and
service providers, and residents of north
Lethbridge, the idea of the Pop-Up Health
and Community Services Event came to
fruition. “There [are] all kinds of challenges
or barriers that people face to getting the
services they need. We wanted to explore
those with the north side community,
which we did in two big forums,” Shannon
explains. “Community-based primary health
care is a pretty big beast, and there’s a large
variety in the number of interventions that
have been designed to assist populations
to improve their access to care. Across [the
IMPACT] study, there are very different
approaches that are being taken. For
example, in one of the Australian states,
it’s more about gaining better access to