|
Geoff Van Geem – Health Promoter at SEGCHC
As the Health Promoter, my role at the CHC is two-fold. I am responsible for overseeing and evaluating many of the community programs we run, while educating and helping families navigate through our complex social system.
While Covid-19 has caused some of our community programs to be put on hold, it has given us an opportunity to create new programs and to adapt many others to continue. An example of this is Check In & Chat. This new program was created to help isolated and vulnerable members in our community, by having volunteers connect with them by phone on a weekly basis.
Several other of our programs are continuing to run such as: volunteer income tax preparation; free skate exchange: and our LGBTQ2S+ support group.
Regardless of the program, our focus is always on health promotion and disease prevention.
Navigating through our social system can often be difficult, especially for our vulnerable community members. It could be something as simple as helping to complete documents and government forms or finding transportation to a medical appointment. It may be more complex, such as working with government agencies to apply for benefits. Whatever the challenge might be, my role is to work with people and other organizations to help resolve issues and offer solutions to our clients.
Everything we do has a focus on the social determinants of health and how this impacts individual, family and community systems.
The Health Promoter is one member of the professional team at the Community Health Centre that supports the community programs and works closely with community partners to address our clients’ and communities’ needs.
|
