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.

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.