February 2018 Board Meeting - Minutes

Opioid misuse is a significant problem in our community that includes visits to emergency rooms and an increase in hospitalization over the years. Windsor-Essex is higher than the provincial average for overdoses. The number of fatalities from overdoses continue to increase.

Dr. Ahmed discussed the Cycle of Addiction, Experimentation – Prescriptions – Dependence – Recovery – Abuse. Family history of addiction predisposes individuals to become addicted. Prevention is needed.  Individuals need to be directed to services. Better reporting is also required to identify areas to target and enhance harm reduction to reduce the transmission of disease. 

The Windsor-Essex Community Opioid Strategy (WECOS) is based on 4 pillars and there are 4 sub-committees or working groups that have been formed to work on outcomes for these pillars. 

Public health’s role is to form partnerships--do our part, avoid duplication, share data, develop early warning system(s), health promotion and disease prevention, harm reduction (support other agencies through naloxone distribution and training) and advocacy. 

Windsor-Essex is working with our community partners to explore the idea of an Overdose Prevention Site (OPS). Any agency focused on harm reduction can apply for a temporary OPS through the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. The Ministry can fund an OPS site for a period of 3-6 months. Staff must be properly trained and must have a registered healthcare provider available to help users if needed. It is not the same as a safe injection site (SIS). 

Next steps in the WECOS is to train and distribute naloxone to community agencies. The board asked questions about the idea of mobile supervised injection sites. Dr. Ahmed responded that in the absence of central supervised injection service, mobile sites may not be effective. The solution is comprised of many components and supervised injection is part of the solution not the only solution.

Dr. Ahmed’s report will be forwarded to the Board.

The Health Unit meets the challenges of its budget every year. When the Health Unit does not have the ability to spend its budget allocation, funds are returned to the Ministry. The Province is not responsible for funding; however, municipalities are obligated to deliver dollars as required for public health services. What is received from the province is a grant which is always based on the previous year. The WECHU has 5-6 weeks to spend the money from the last budget. Because the agency was unable, monies had to be returned, otherwise they could have been held in a reserve to address specific needs.

L. Damphouse will send the Board background information. Reserves will be brought forward to the next meeting for discussion. The Board was asked to consider the Health Unit having the ability. This reserve piece would good for strategic planning.

H. Payne left 4:52 pm

Board members B. Marra and Dr. Ken Blanchette are members of the Strategic Planning Committee.   

The committee met in January to look at goals and measures, and made revisions to the plan as needed.  

Goals related to the Health Unit’s strategic priorities of Communication and Awareness, Partnerships, Organizational Development, and Evidence-Based Public Health Practice were reviewed. 

Health equity education will be provided to the Board which came up in the board evaluation survey. 

K. McBeth discussed the colour coded legend on page 3 of the update.  Red means there is more work needed towards achieving that objective and some of that work has been incorporated into operational plans for 2018. The agency continues to work on green and yellow to– enforce ongoing corporate dialogue to keep the strategic plan alive, develop a corporate tracking system so managers incorporate the objectives as appropriate and link it back to our strategic plan. Board will receive quarterly updates that is not redundant. 

Dr. Blanchette congratulated K. McBeth for her leadership and everyone that was involved in the process.

The strategic plan is a living document that is updated annually.

It was moved
That the report be received - CARRIED

The agency continues to look at continuous quality improvement and also looks at whether we are achieving our activities as per the Ontario Public Health Standards. The focus is on project management. The report does not contain an exhaustive list of every activities, nor will it illustrate day to day activities. It will illustrate high level project activities with a focus on accountability, project management, and minimal resources required to perform these activities. M. Watters questioned benchmarking with other health units. K. McBeth explained that health units right now are at different stages in their planning and are very different in their planning system and it would be difficult to compare. Health units in the future will see a much more comparable system with the institution of the annual service plan.

Seventy percent of activities identified in our operational plan were either completed or on target for 2017.  With the new electronic planning system (M-Files), the agency can be better aligned with operational activities.

K. McBeth will forward her presentation to the Board.

It was moved
That the report be received - CARRIED