At the July 9 committee of the whole meeting at city hall in Williams Lake, city council heard from IH public health team members.
Marnie Brenner, community health facilitator and Dr. Andy Delli Pizzi, medical health officer, spoke to council on the Healthy Communities Program and the role of the community facilitator.
The facilitator is meant to work with a range of community partners, including local government, in healthy community planning.
Their presentation included information on the critical role of local government in using long-term planning to improve overall public health and the importance of the built, social, economic and natural environments for public health and preventing a broad range of chronic illnesses.
The facilitator and public health team can help provide evidence-based research to help inform official community planning and deal with planning referrals. The team also can support grant application processes and participate in committees and give feedback on best practices. The network of public health facilitators from across the province can also help provide examples and success stories from other communities, explained Pizzi.
About 60 per cent of what influences our health is related to factors in our natural, built and social environments, according to research from the Canadian Medical Association.
Ten per cent in environmental factors such as air quality and civic infrastructure, and 50 per cent is our own life factors such as income, education, social interactions, social safety net, gender, race, housing or homelessness, a sense of community belonging, and other related factors.
While the upstream or prevention aspects of health care are not always given the same attention, they can have large influences on health outcomes, according to Pizzi and Brenner.
The community has a large influence on the upstream factors like infrastructure and the quality of the natural environment.
Effective planning creates supportive social and built environments, promoting healthy lifestyle and social connections, explained Pizzi and Brenner.
Building blocks of health include factors like affordable housing, poverty reduction, parks, trails, healthy climate and sustainability, active transportation, age-friendly and youth-focused programs to support those at risk, healthy food systems and food security.
The pair emphasized the desire for Interior Health to partner effectively with local government to support a healthier community.
Reaction to the presentation was muted, perhaps influenced by the recent closures of the emergency room in the community.
Coun. Sheila Boehm said she was focused on the current crisis and wanted to see some results from the "upstream" factors before she would be focused on those.
Coun. Joan Flaspohler emphasized her support for planning and recreational opportunities to support a healthier community and help attract and retain professionals, which Mayor Surinderpal Rathor said he also supported.
Council received the presentation with an amendment to also ask Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry to remove the requirement for health care practitioners to be vaccinated for Covid-19 in order to allow those who did not get the vaccine to return to work.
