Community Advocates for Hospitals and Health Care in Muskoka and Area aims to collect and amplify resident and cottager voices when it comes to health-care decisions and challenges in the region…
Community Advocates for Hospitals and Healthcare in Muskoka and Area. CAHHMA
MUSKOKA — A new advocacy initiative encourages Muskoka to get loud for health care.
“We’re a representative association of Muskoka and Southeast Parry Sound community groups, residents and cottagers, who are committed to maintaining and improving our emergency and acute care hospitals in both Bracebridge and Huntsville,” said Peter Cross, a representative for Community Advocates for Hospitals and Health Care in Muskoka and Area, which launched on Feb. 26. “And also, in the long-term, we are committed to advocating for other health-care services.”
The association, which supports a two-hospital model for Muskoka, launched days before the Muskoka Algonquin Healthcare capital plan development task force would host a public meeting on future hospital plans for the region on Thursday, March 1, at the District of Muskoka offices, 70 Pine St., Bracebridge, at 5 p.m.
Task force deliberations continued about whether the region would have only one hospital in future.
“What we’ve learned from around the province is that community advocacy can be a very powerfully positive thing,” said Cross. “And there are success stories and data around the province, including Wallaceburg, Welland and Alliston, where communities are advocating to help their hospital boards and LHINs make the right, safe decisions.”
Phyllis Winnington-Ingram, a fellow representative, said the association website, cahhma.com, offered a sounding board for community comment, while the association itself would pull voices together and encourage active and vocal participation by groups and individuals through letter writing, presentations and more.
Community members, she said, rather than government-funded organizations would lead the bottom-up initiative.
“We’re not here just to complain and yell. We’re really here so the community can be heard on something that is critically important,” said David Wilkin, an association representative and former hospital board member.
He added insufficient hospital funding was also on the association’s radar.
“We know that when it comes to money, the funding for communities, you have to advocate,” added Wilkin. “If you’re quiet and you don’t advocate — the community doesn’t engage — then there is risk that you will be left behind in a process where there is just not enough money to do everything.”
Alison Brownlee Huntsville Forester