The IWK Health Centre is going to partner with a Spryfield community health centre to get more pediatricians closer to the neighbourhoods their patients live in. They’ll start sending hospital doctors to the Community Wellness Centre starting Jan. 19, according to a CBC report.

The Community Wellness Centre at South Centre Mall (also called Spryfield Shopping Centre—on Dentith between Herring Cove and Old Sambro Roads) is already an important part of the neighbourhood’s health. Free parking, a bus stop, and a central location in the Spryfield/Sambro/Armdale area, according to the a Wellness Centre doctor, will help people get over the transportation problems (of getting your kids all the way to the IWK) and the cost of hospital or downtown parking. It’s meant to help solve the problem that “when families make the trip to the IWK Health Centre, it's often in an emergency situation, when there isn't time to teach families about children's health.”

The pediatricians will see to children in Spryfield two days a week.

Having a central location for access to health services (including nutrition, doctors, fitness classes) can help reduce the stigma of seeking help for things like mental health or addiction counselling, according to Capital Health. But it is also terribly convenient, a “phenomenal example … of where it is we want to go in health care,” as the Health Minister put it during an early spring tour of the facility.

The Wellness Centre consists of Capital Health’s Chebucto Community Health team, Dalhousie Family Medicine, and the Chebucto Communities Development Association, all under one roof.

For example, this month some of the free services the Centre is offering include:

• Cooking with the Community Health Team
• Nordic Walking 4-Week Program
• Budgeting and the Price of Debt
• Noon Meditation
• Living at Home Longer: Home Care Programs That Can Help

(source: Outside the Circle)

(Photo by myfuture.com)