In this edition: Report on attendance from our disease prevention webinar, introducing our new webpages, an opportunity for patients everywhere to join our plant-rich virtual groups, and a new article in the medical post.

Our Disease Prevention webinar series is now complete. We focused on practical tools for cancer screening and smoking cessation. We welcomed 85 attendees from across Ontario with a diverse cross section of the primary care team members attending including 23 Family Health Teams, 8 Ontario Health Teams, and 6 Nurse Practitioner Led Clinics. A 25-minute video of the contents can be found here. Thank you to everyone who attended! A warm welcome in particular to all of the Quality Improvement folks who attended who can further share the cancer screening tools with their teams. 

We received positive feedback, including from Peter Nguyen, Quality Improvement Decision Support Specialist from Newmarket, ON who asked: “Are there other upcoming webinars for these green initiatives?" And yes there are…Our next webinar, entitled “Test & Treat for Impact,” which includes Choosing Wisely guidelines, will be delivered in late Winter/early Spring 2023.

As the Green Initiative grew, we realized we needed to expand out website, so we completely re-organized it into comprehensive, digestible sections that reflect our initiative categories. For example, now if you are looking for our Plant-Rich Eating Clinical Talking Points document, click on our plant-rich eating logo to find it in seconds. Check it out here.

A huge thanks to Joanna Barrotta for making these changes under a tight timeline and to Jennifer Kaye for designing many of our logos. 

Here are some of your comments so far on the new website: 

“Your website is a work of art!” ~Sarah Nestico, Clinical Nurse Specialist, St. Michael’s FHT Green Team Co-Lead

“The website is getting better and better. Amazing work!” ~Ross Kirkconnell, Executive Director, Guelph FHT

Patient-Facing Plant-Rich Eating Groups:

The inaugural Plant-Rich Eating patient session is a wrap. 10 happy patients attended and learned the health and planetary benefits of eating more plants with concrete suggestions as to how to start with a Registered Dietitian. The next session runs on November 21st and 28th from 6:30-8:00 PM. We have 16 registrants so far, but we can accommodate more! These patient-facing sessions are open to all patients in Canada and available by self-referral by emailing [email protected] or calling 905-667-4852. See our flyer here to help patients register. Thank you to the Hamilton FHT for offering these sessions!

How Going Green Can Reduce Office Overhead Costs

In October, Drs. Meghan Davis and Myles Sergeant were interviewed in a Medical Post article discussing how to cut office costs while reducing the environmental operating impact of healthcare. Take a look here!

"For the sake of our health, our children and grandchildren and even our economic well-being, we must make protecting the planet our top priority."

- Dr. David Suzuki

Green Initiative Website

Edition 20 | November 18, 2022