PlanH Healthy Communities Grant Program 2022 cycle now open
Local and Indigenous governments in B.C. working to build equitable policies and processes now have access to additional funding and support to help make it happen.
Learning together: Lessons from our grant communities
If the goal of healthy public policy is to create improved conditions which in turn improve population and community health, then as a whole, healthy public policies must also be equitable and serve to reverse health inequities.
THE ISSUE: Healthy Public Policy
Rather than directly addressing health, healthy public policies make changes to living conditions that impact health—such as housing, transportation and income—in order to improve a community’s health and well-being, while often positively impacting other issues directly within local government purview.
THE ISSUE: Self-Care
By promoting self-care as a primary means of maintaining health and well-being, we forget that not everyone in our community has access to the time, space and sometimes money that are required to perform self-care.
Emergency Community Support Fund Open for Applications
The Government of Canada’s $350 million Emergency Community Support Fund is now open. The Emergency Community Support Fund supports community organizations helping vulnerable people during the COVID-19 crisis.
Community Engagement & Physical Distancing: A list of resources
Many organizations are working to make physically-distant community engagement a reality. We’re sharing a list of some free resources to help local governments get started.
THE ISSUE: Economic Equality
Healthy Communities foster health by creating environments that support health. Though we often think of physical environments such as Healthy Built Environments and Healthy Natural Environments, the environments within communities that impact our health can also be social, economic, and political.
Building an Age-Friendly region: Trail, Rossland and Montrose collaborate on a strategy
Recently, the City of Rossland, in partnership with the neighbouring City of Trail and the Village of Montrose, embarked on a regional strategy to ensure that older adults can continue to be involved and active in their community into their later years. The communities recently worked together to complete their Age-Friendly Community Action Plans, ensuring the documents contained both aligned regional priorities and plans specific to each community’s needs.
Wells clears the way for older adults to stay involved in the community
“For a small community like Wells, keeping [older adults] in the community becomes even more important, because that’s a lot of our community history, it’s volunteerism, traditional knowledge, it’s the life of our local non-profits,” says Wylie Bystedt, Marketing and Community Economic Development Coordinator for Wells. The community of just over 200 put that knowledge to work in recent years, when it embarked on its Age-friendly assessment
Looking out for tomorrow: Cranbrook plans for future Age-friendly needs
The City of Cranbrook is taking steps to ensure that the city is ready to meet the needs of her demographic, which is projected to make up 41% of Cranbrook’s population by 2035. The city has recently released their Age-friendly Community Action Plan, a document which will help the city set priorities and lay out the next steps towards ensuring the city is safe and welcoming for older adults.