Lloydminster and District Health Advisory Council chair, Paul Richer, speaks during a senior’s meeting on Tuesday afternoon as Darrell Dunn looks on. Geoff Lee Meridian Source
The Lloydminster and District Health Advisory Council will lay all of its cards face up at a public meeting and reshuffle the deck with any new health concerns that pop up.
The council plans to spread awareness of its progress and accomplishments and invites residents to identify missing gaps at the Legacy Centre on May 18 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
“The idea of getting this public session going is just to make the public aware of what we’re working on and to see if there’s anything that we’re missing,” said advisory council chair, Paul Richer.
He and Dr. Raff Sayeed, the council’s newly elected vice-chair, are hoping for a big turnout.
The advisory council advocates governments and health care managers on improvements they see are needed in this region with advice from community members and the general public.
Richer says they’ve been successful at looking at the EMS services around Lloydminster, for example, along with continual improvements to dialysis services.
“There’s been several other things that we’ve been looking at such as palliative care, operating rooms and expansion on the hospital and just a lack of doctors,” said Richer.
“See our Facebook page and come and participate with what is going well in health care and what we might have missing from our current list of priorities in our region.”
The council represents the City of Lloydminster, Onion Lake Cree First Nation, the RMs of Wilton and Britannia and the County of Vermilion River.
Graham Brown, president of Lloydminster Concerned Citizens for Seniors Care Society, which works in conjunction with the advisory council on seniors issues, has a common goal for the meeting.
“We’re really trying to find out if there’s some issues out there that we’re not really working on yet,” said Brown.
“Feedback is the main idea as to why we’re having this public meeting.”
The format of the meeting is going to be a come-and-go opportunity with some handout information.
“I really hope we can get some good community engagement,” said Richer.
“We want the opportunities to have some written testimonies if there is some requirement for some people to feel they need some support on certain areas, and we’ll be able to monitor it from there.”
Richer says the whole idea of advocacy is to just see where there can be improvements, in particular with border issues in our bi-provincial city.
“We probably have more than most,” said Richer.
He says there will be some display boards on some of the projects they are hoping to work on and to clearly explain some of their successes.
“Hopefully, we’ll have some representatives from the government to help answer some questions,” added Richer.
