Message from Jody Nesti
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Chair, Board of Directors, Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation
January 17, 2018
Happy New Year!
Many of you generously gave to the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation over the holidays, and I want to personally thank you for helping us get the best healthcare possible in Thunder Bay and Northwestern Ontario. It’s everything we deserve – and everything we deserve to have locally to care for our families, our friends and our community.
Providing the same level of care can be a huge challenge due to distance and other barriers. The Hospital is the regional care hub for all of Northwestern Ontario, so we support healthcare programs to communities and First Nations from Kenora and Red Lake in the West to Hearst and White River in the east, and north to Hudson Bay.
I’m grateful our donors are willing to help. We need to meet our unique challenges in unique ways. Telemedicine including videoconference physician consults, the Screen for Life Coach, and other programs ensure we all have equal access to healthcare services. But these services come at a price and not all costs are covered by government sources. The Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation directs funding to support many of these services.
In other words, it’s donors like you who make the real difference. I’d love to share with you exactly how you are helping patients in Northwestern Ontario every day, but there is not enough room in this report to tell all the patient stories! That’s why we provide them to you through a number of articles we publish in the Chronicle-Journal every Wednesday and Saturday as well as on our website (healthsciencesfoundation.ca/news), our Facebook page (facebook.com/healthsciencesfoundation), and our Twitter feed (twitter.com/tbrhsf).
I think it’s important to tell these stories. For one, it highlights our successes. Every person who walks through our doors has a story, and every day our doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals try to give that story a happy ending. For another though, I feel it’s important that we show you how we are directing your donations to do the most good for our patients. We are stewards of your hard-earned dollars, and we are very selective in how we use your donations.
In my mind, it’s easy: we deserve to have the same level of healthcare despite the geographic and other challenges. The healthcare professionals at our Hospital continue to come up with innovative and imaginative solutions to those challenges. But we can’t put those solutions into action without the generous support of our communities. Your donations bring their ideas to life and continue to push the quality of our healthcare to new levels.
We simply wouldn’t be able to do it without you.