It’s going to take a total team effort from various community stakeholders to ensure residents of the South Okanagan and Similkameen valleys live longer, happier and healthier lives, says the founder of unique pilot project designed to dramatically improve community health in this region.
“This is all about the sharing of ideas and sharing of knowledge by working together,” said Gerry Karr, a retired physician from Kelowna and the founder of the Okanagan Similkameen Healthy Living Coalition (OSHLC), which held its inaugural forum last Wednesday at the Watermark Beach Resort in Osoyoos.
More than 80 members of the coalition – including doctors, nurses, nurse practitioners, mayors, municipal councillors, alternative medicine practitioners, school district administration and employees who provide health care services to seniors– participated in the one-day forum.
The OSHLC is a community-driven umbrella organization that brings together regional governance and community resources for healthy living to design and implement integrated, collaborative and innovative programs for healthy living with a focus on children, youth and vulnerable populations.
When the original coalition was formed back in 2011, it consisted of only six members, but has grown in two short years to almost 20 members, including six municipalities, four First Nation bands, three school districts, the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen, Interior Health Authority and the Okanagan-Similkameen Health Living Society.
The long-term goal is to have as many as 60 to 80 organizations, groups and agencies on board and working together by sharing information and planning healthy living initiatives by the time the five-year pilot project is completed, said Karr, who made a keynote speech at last week’s forum.
As a physician with more than 40 years of experience, Karr said the only way to improve overall community health is for all stakeholders who provide health care to share information and initiate healthy living initiatives through a team concept.
“That’s why we decided to form a coalition which brings together all organizations in this region that have any interest at all in health care,” said Karr. “The idea is to share information and knowledge and basically create a game plan where, by working together, we can come up with strategies and plans to improve community health.”
The coalition will implement a five-year-year pilot project aimed at developing a model for other communities across the province. The programs will engage, enable and support our people to achieve the rewards of a healthy lifestyle and to adopt healthy living as a community norm, said Karr.
“This is important because the prevalence of several chronic diseases directly attributable to unhealthy lifestyles continues to increase despite the many existing primary prevention and health promotion strategies,” he said. “This upward trend is a major contributor to the growth in health care spending as a proportion of our provincial budget and threatens the sustainability of our health care system. We need to do things differently if we want to reverse the trend.”
The coalition’s programs will reach, engage and support individuals in target populations to set and achieve personal lifestyle goals and experience the reward of healthy living, he said.
By working together, the coalition will seek to obtain funding to support its work from senior governments and corporate foundations, he said.
To be successful, the coalition needs the full engagement of regional authorities to create the new organizational structure and programs that will be the basis of an effective healthy living system that is separate from but linked to our health care system, said Karr.
At the end of the five-year pilot project we will have a working model that can be adapted to other community settings and we will see substantial improvement in indicators of lifestyle health for our region, said Karr.
Programs on healthy eating, nutrition, promoting community engagement by building and maintaining trail and bike paths and quality recreational programs are key components to improving community health, he said.
Target populations include First Nation residents, children and seniors, said Karr, noting there are traditionally much more incidents of obesity and poor eating habits among this segment of the population.
As the coalition grows and more agencies and groups get involved, the easier it will be to create programs and share knowledge with all stakeholders, he said.
A similar conference is being planned for the fall to update progress  being made by coalition members to establish programs in various communities across the region, said Karr.
The federal and provincial governments have finally realized the current health care system that concentrates on healing people after they become sick isn’t working and more money must be spent on stressing the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle starting at a very young age, said Karr.
At the end of the pilot project, a plethora of healthy living programs will be established with a proven record of success allowing for  similar coalitions to be formed across the province.