A warm and sincere thank you to Katie Pospiech, our Healthy Start / Départ Santé Knowledge Development and Exchange Coordinator for the past year and a half. As her journey with our project draws to a close, we wish to thank Katie for her contribution to the team and to the project. Her kind, quiet disposition and sweet demeanour helped guide our work in advancing Healthy Start / Départ Santé!
The Healthy Start team was eager to attend the Wicihitowin (We-che-hit-o-win) Aboriginal Engagement Conference in Saskatoon on October 12 & 13, 2016. The team has been making good strides and effort over the past year to include Indigenous content within the Healthy Start program and felt that this conference would be a way to learn more together. The conference went beyond our expectations. From opening and closing prayers, to the wide variety of speakers, there were many opportunities to reflect both personally and professionally to find our own Calls to Action as outlined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Below are three Calls to Action that are relevant to Healthy Start/Départ Santé and the work we do in our neighboring communities throughout Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. Child welfare 5. We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial, and Aboriginal governments to develop culturally appropriate parenting programs for Aboriginal families. Education 12. We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial, and Aboriginal governments to develop culturally appropriate early childhood education programs for Aboriginal families. Health 18. We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial, and Aboriginal governments to acknowledge that the current state of Aboriginal health in Canada is a direct result of previous Canadian government policies, including residential schools, and to recognize and implement the health-care rights of Aboriginal people as identified in international law, constitutional law, and under the Treaties. Professional Development and Training for Public Servants 57. We call upon federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments to provide education to public servants on the history of Aboriginal peoples, including the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties and Aboriginal rights, Indigenous law, and Aboriginal–Crown relations. This will require skills-based training in intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human rights, and anti-racism. (“Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action, 2015”) One of the conference speakers, Tyrone Tootoosis, said it best, “Bring back family relationships because that’s what was broken.” This resonated with the Healthy Start team as it speaks to enhancing family time spent preparing healthy foods together as well as creating positive eating environments. This quote is also important as it encourages families to be active together and to develop healthy lifestyle habits. As a result of attending the conference, the Healthy Start team will apply this valuable knowledge and awareness going forward in our work. We will be making changes around the office and within the training content. We also plan on working closely with Indigenous stakeholders and are always open to ideas and suggestions from previous and current Healthy Start participants on how we can improve for our audience. Our team encourages everyone to review the 94 Calls to Action and find one (or more) that speaks to you personally and/or within your own organization.
Encouraging healthy eating and physical activity in the early years of a child’s life could have long lasting effects into adulthood. On January 18th, coordinators, community partners and policy makers gathered at the Healthy Start/Départ Santé Symposium in Saskatoon to share and reveal how healthy eating and physical activity have an immediate and long term impact. “As an adult, it is expected that the children who become healthier will be using less of those health care services – that means there’s substantial saving there for the publicly funded health care system,” panelist Dr. Nasmi Sari said during at the symposium. “That’s a benefit that you will get out of this intervention.” Healthy Start/Départ Santé is a bilingual initiative intended to encourage healthy eating and physical activity for children aged three to five in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick. The initiative originated from a partnership of individuals and organizations that wanted to include an early years component to the Saskatoon Health Region’s in-motion program. Dr. Sari has experience in researching healthcare financing reforms, as well as quality and efficiency issues in hospital markets. He added that if the Healthy Start/Départ Santé initiative results in having any impact on the lives of people later on in life, such as shorter hospital stays, that could mean cost savings on the health care system. Healthy Start/Départ Santé has already lead to immediate changes within the childcare centres where it has been implemented. Tasha Balkwill, executive director of the Whitmore Park Child Care Co-op in Regina, has been using the Healthy Start/Départ in her day care for about a year. She noted how the children are no longer scared of trying new foods thanks to fun and easy Healthy Start/Départ Santé ideas implemented in the daily routine. “The children will eat really quite anything we put out now,” Balkwill said. “They’re not scared of new foods and the children that are more hesitant to eat new foods are way more accepting to try it.” Healthy Start/Départ Santé encourages staff and educators to provide children with healthy foods to choose from. When given a choice, children appeared to be more likely to try new foods, Balkwill said. To promote activity, the initiative suggests that children should reach about 180 minutes of physical activity a day – which can seem like a daunting task, Balkwill noted. “It’s not always vigorous (activity),” Balkwill said. “It could be bending down to clean up, just anything where their entire body is moving or part of their body is moving so they’re not just sitting still in a solitary state all day, sitting on the carpet doing nothing. “That has really jump started us and changed the centre quite a bit,” she added. What’s next for Healthy Start/Départ Santé? Healthy Start/ Départ Santé project manager Gabrielle Lepage-Lavoie noted the symposium was an opportunity to share results from the last four years with key stakeholders, government partners and policy makers. The Symposium also marks the end of Phase 2 of the initiative. “We wanted to be able to tell our story, share some successes, lessons learned and then to launch our continued work with Phase 3,” Lepage-Lavoie said. Phase 3, expected to continue until 2019, will focus on long-term sustainability and expansion of Healthy Start/Départ Santé in both Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, funded in part by the Public Health Agency of Canada. Lepage-Lavoie noted the third phase is also an opportunity to create a sustainability mechanism for the initiative, such as an online training. The Healthy Start/Départ Santé team will look for ways to increase parent engagement and adapt the initiative for various cultures. “It will be a jam packed three years,” Lepage-Lavoie said. Healthy Start is led by the Réseau Santé en français de la Saskatchewan is funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Community Initiatives Fund; and partnered with the University of Saskatchewan including the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, College of Medicine; College of Kinesiology; College of Pharmacy & Nutrition. Other Healthy Start partners include the Centre de formation médicale du N-B, (Université de Sherbrooke et de Moncton, New Brunswick); Saskatchewan Early Childhood Association (SECA); the Saskatchewan Prevention Institute; Active Kids/Jeunes actifs, New Brunswick; Association des parents Fransaskois (APF); NB Family Resource Centres; ECE Colleges in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick; and the Ministries of Education and Health in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick.
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