CONTRIBUTING TO OUR HEALTH

BY SHELLEY CAMERON-MCCARRON

It’s no secret health care is increasingly overburdened and a key challenge facing governments and communities across Canada today.

How can StFX help? It’s a question StFX administrators, its faculty and students, many of whom have long been involved in health practice and research, are ready to answer.

“We’re a university. We’re here to serve the public in the best way we can,” says StFX President Dr. Andy Hakin. “Improving health care is a major focus in Nova Scotia right now. We’re looking at ourselves as a partner in the health system, and asking important questions about the ways we can best help and support. We know that we can bring new ideas to the table. Our role is not to be an ivory tower. It is to be responsive to the needs of our community and those beyond.” e Institute, designed to bring faculty, sta , and community members together with the tools and space needed for people with ideas to gather and collaborate, supports a shi toward preventive health, of keeping people well and out of the hospital.

Establishing the $55 million Institute for Innovation in Health, a planned hub at StFX to address shi ing health needs in rural Nova Scotia - through collaborative learning, professional development, and community-responsive research - is viewed as a critical step in the university’s plans to better support the health system.

Currently, StFX has raised about half the project funds from the federal government and private sources and is looking to secure the rest before the Institute can proceed. It’s hoped it will be completed by 2024.

“We’re looking to raise the funds required in short order to address the needs of the province,” Dr. Hakin says.

“ e days of building an academic building that only serves the university’s needs are over. e Institute must have connections into the community. It will have impacts on the health and well-being of Nova Scotians. It will contribute to improvements and changes in our healthcare system and serve the professional development needs of a broad range of healthcare professionals.”

“What really resonates with me,” says StFX Associate Vice-

President Research & Graduate Studies Dr. Richard Isnor, “is that we need to start thinking of health as more than doctors and nurses taking care of sick people…and to think about how our academic programs and research can contribute to upstream approaches to health and wellness, from addressing the social and economic determinants of health, traditionally under-served populations, and health promotion e orts across the lifespan. We must look at what we can do as an educational institution to bring a “health in all things” perspective to bear in our research, teaching, professional development, and service to community.” is includes building o strengths already inherent at StFX— educating students who go into meaningful careers in many health professions, community outreach and service programs that encourage wellness, nutrition, mental health, and physical activity, and long-established health research programs that directly impact the community or lead to health innovations.

In fact, about 75 of StFX’s faculty researchers, across disciplines, contribute to health innovation in Nova Scotia. StFX also hosts the National Collaborating Centre for the Determinants of Health. Further, approximately 40 per cent of StFX students are enrolled annually in health-orientated studies. With over 50 per cent of students coming to StFX from outside Nova Scotia and over 55 per cent of StFX graduates remaining in the province, we are doing our part in growing the capacity of our provincial health system.

“One of the most valuable assets we have at StFX is the time and capacity of talented individuals who have the ability to undertake research and outreach activities to impact upstream health outcomes that is really in short supply in the health system,” says Dr. Isnor. “We have capacity to make time for research, for re ection, for experimentation whilst immediately bringing bene ts to the overall wellness of our community.”

Dr. Isnor has organized several “getting to know you” forums with Nova Scotia Health, community organizations, and StFX academic researchers and sta , and in early 2023, is teaming with VP Student Services Elizabeth Yeo to organize a joint meeting with Nova Scotia Health that’s planned to lead to even broader sessions to see how partners can work more closely together and understand pressing opportunities.

Communication was also key in creating opportunity to bring a mobile health clinic, a provincial pilot program designed to reduce the load on ERs, to campus in November, which helped StFX students seeking care and helped ease pressure on the local hospital.

“ e idea of StFX working for the bene t of community is far from new. It goes back to the Antigonish Movement,” Dr. Hakin says. “We’re retracing our footsteps. By giving to the community, we believe we can create better outcomes for all. It’s exciting, where we’re dusting o that history in a new reality with respect to what’s needed by today’s society.”

Both Dr. Hakin and Dr. Isnor stress this collaborative work is happening now, but they want to push it much further.

“We’re trying to create an environment where linkages are more obvious and a place where ideas can ow,” Dr. Hakin says.

Dr. Isnor says alumni and donors can support the project in many ways from supporting research chairs to scholarships, to professional development activities for health workers, including special events and speaker series.

In January, StFX will hire a design rm to start consultations within StFX and with external stakeholders to discuss how the space can maximize our health programs, how to be ready for the future, and meet community needs.

“It will set the seeds of the dream,” says Dr. Hakin, “to try to bring people together in a natural cluster, that will give them community and connect them to the mission of giving back to the community.”

“It does enable people to see an alternative future,” says Dr. Isnor.