Name: Teresa Packer (she/her/hers)
Job Title: Support services supervisor
Years of Service: 15
Worksite: Kootenay Boundary Regional Hospital (KBH)
Community:  Trail
Ancestral Territory: Ktunaxa (tun-ah-ha)/ Kootenay Ktunaxa

In 2021, a year marked by catastrophic wildfires and floods in B.C., Tamara Sommer was hired to support the Health Emergency Management B.C. (HEMBC) team at Interior Health (IH). Today, Tamara is the Indigenous HEM liaison, supporting First Nations communities throughout the Interior region.

It’s that time of year when the weather has warmed up and the snowpack is rapidly melting, causing some localized flooding in communities across Interior Health. 

Flooding causes devastation to infrastructure, municipal and personal property, but it can also have major health implications, such as contaminated water. Residents impacted by flooding need to be aware of the potential risks associated with drinking water at this time. 

Please see the attached document to learn more about the look, contamination, and risk associated with the current drug alert.

Cranbrook Drug Alert May 4, 2023

National Nursing Week is an annual celebration that occurs the same week as Florence Nightingale’s birthday, May 12.

The theme for 2023 is Our Nurses. Our Future. This theme showcases the many roles that nurses play in a patient’s health-care journey. The past few years have brought to light the courage and commitment that nurses work under every day, and showed the important role that nurses play in the community.

Based in the Okanagan, Dr. Megan Hill is a family physician (FP) with a subspecialty in addictions medicine.  Dr. Hill first encountered harm reduction in med school. “I wrote a paper on Insite (Vancouver’s supervised consumption site) and was immediately drawn to the evidence and logic behind this approach,” she says. “It’s a profoundly logical approach to helping people get better by engaging them and giving them medications that help them feel better as opposed to being punitive.

If you're having a baby in Penticton, you’re part of an international initiative to improve the care that families receive before, during and after the birth of their baby, thanks to the Baby-Friendly Initiative.

The Baby-Friendly Initiative, or BFI, is a World Health Organization and UNICEF program that guides health-care providers in breastfeeding best practices, and ensures families have the support they need and want.

Royal Inland Hospital (RIH) in Kamloops has completed a three-year project that will see waste anesthetic gases (WAGs) collected in all 11 of its operating rooms, significantly reducing the hospital’s carbon footprint.

Anesthetic gases used for surgeries are a known potent source of greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to climate change. Only five per cent of anesthetic gas is metabolized by the body, while the remaining 95 per cent is typically collected and vented out of the operating room and building.

Name: Angela Ozero (she/her/hers)
Job Title:  Physiotherapist
Years of Service: 15
Worksite: Vernon Jubilee Hospital
Community: Vernon
Ancestral Territory: Syilx Okanagan
Favourite Quote: “Today is a gift. That's why we call it 'The Present'.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

During National Immunization Awareness Week (April 24 – 30), Interior Health encourages individuals and families to stay on track with their immunizations.

“It is hard to imagine a world without vaccines,” said Dr. Fatemeh Sabet, Interior Health medical health officer. “I am so grateful for having access to a simple tool that has saved millions of lives and prevented serious consequences of so many vaccine preventable communicable diseases.”