Pinaymootang Health Centre helps fill health-care gaps for First Nation, surrounding communities

A Manitoba First Nation is helping to bridge the gap in health-care services not only for its members, but for multiple surrounding Interlake communities.

The Pinaymootang Health Centre helps care for thousands of Manitobans every year, but nearly half of its clientele comes from outside Pinaymootang First Nation.

"We see 47 per cent of clients that come in from various areas," health director Gwen Traverse said. "Whether the surrounding First Nations or the non-Indigenous communities that utilize our services."

Being more than 200 km northwest of Winnipeg, in the Interlake area, Traverse said there is a dire need for more supports and the health centre has helped to bridge the gap.

"We live in poverty. There's such a lack," she said. "We want to bring these services closer to home. There's a lot of services being offered at this health centre now that aren't offered on most First Nations."

The centre expanded in 2018, which allowed it to offer more services, but it's already outgrowing the building. It has doctors coming to the community twice a week, a satellite pharmacy, women's clinics, home and community care, immunization clinics, blood draws, dental services and foot care.

"It is an equalizing factor because we can help them get the services they need, and we're trying our best to decrease some of the barriers that we find just by bringing more services closer to home," nurse in charge Roxanne Rawluk said.

New ideas from Pinaymootang

The Pinaymootang Health Centre has become a model for other communities through projects run in the community on a smaller scale. In 2015, Pinaymootang piloted a program called My Child, My Heart that ensured children could get care for complex medical needs in their community.

The program and its services were showcased to the rest of Manitoba when funding began for Jordan's Principle, Traverse says.

Jordan's Principle aims to ensure First Nations children get prompt access to health and social services with questions about which jurisdiction pays for them worked out afterward. It's named after Jordan River Anderson, a five-year-old Norway House Cree Nation boy who died in 2005 amid a two-year battle between Manitoba and Ottawa over who would pay for his care.

"When Jordan's Principle started, I was very excited about it, just being able to refer the parents to the program to get the services done," Rawluk said.

"To be able to refer [parents] and have childrens' needs met, that was huge. So that program actually has grown and grown all across the country since it started."

Now Pinaymootang pilots more than a dozen different health projects which may be rolled out in Indigenous communities across the country. They've partnered with the University of Manitoba to offer tele-rehab services and they're working with the Heart and Stroke Foundation on cardiovascular health.

"So trying to figure out what kind of programming we can start in the community for improving people's cardiovascular health. So walking programs, nutrition programs, and really partnering also with Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative program," Rawluk said.

Program director Chantell Neff and her team are also in the midst of piloting a program that works with adults with intellectual disabilities and provides on-reserve services for those who have aged out of care. Neff says it's the first of its kind in Canada.

"After the age of 18, they just have zero resources available to them ... on reserve because they're adults," Neff said. 

"So because of that, these adults were living isolated at home with little or no stimulation. But because of the program, we get them out of the house, we train them for different job opportunities, educate them."

Neff hopes other First Nations will soon offer these services.

Helping to fill a health-care void

The centre has an open door policy: no one is ever turned away. For many, the only other options are more than a 30-minute drive away at the hospital in Ashern, Man., or even further in Eriksdale, Man. But those are often unreliable because they are plagued by staffing shortages and closures. 

"If they're closed, then [it's] Winnipeg and that happens. It's reality ... these hospitals close because of the lack of physician care in our in our region," Neff said. "We fill the big gap."

The area is also still feeling the impacts from the 2011 flood. In total, 18 communities were forced to evacuate and 3,000 people were left impacted.

Traverse said the flood deeply impacted people's mental health as many were displaced for years. The First Nation offers mental health services five days a week, and has people available after hours in case of emergency.

"I don't think there is enough mental health services to go around, especially in rural settings and the impacts that the 2011 flood has caused it's heartbreaking. It still saddens me to see the effects of it," she said. 

Traverse said now that her community is back and rebuilding on its land, she is dedicated to ensuring people can stay and age in place. 

She has her sights set on building an Indigenous care home on the First Nation. 

"I want to make sure that our elderly Indigenous get the best care they possibly can."