Message from Parker Jones
Published Monday, June 12, 2023
Chair, Board of Directors, Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation
“What impact does my donation make?”
I get this question or variations of it all the time. It’s only natural that donors wonder what difference they are making when donate to the Our Hearts at Home Cardiovascular Campaign, participate in one of the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation events, or give to the area of greatest need.
As Board Chair and someone who’s been around the Foundation for over a decade, I can tell you that you have a tremendous impact on healthcare at our Hospital. That impact is visible every day.
Where to start? Thanks to your donations to the Our Hearts at Home Cardiovascular Campaign, we already have many of the programs including vascular surgery. Closer-to-home heart surgery is on its way here soon. You’ve helped purchase a new 3T MRI unit, improve care services at our Cancer Centre, and support clinical trials for the new Radialis unit, a homegrown alternative to mammography designed and manufactured right here in Thunder Bay, among many other things. Your contributions to the Urology Fund helped bring equipment to Thunder Bay that few places in Canada have, and in some cases, few places in the world. Our patients don’t fly to Toronto for urology care; patients from across the country fly here.
If you’ve contributed to the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Foundation Family CARE Grant program, you’ve helped purchase stuffies to comfort kids going into surgery, walkers for heart attack and stroke patients to get up and move with confidence, and new exercise equipment for renal patients.
Then there are the programs and equipment you don’t always hear about such as infusion pumps and chemotherapy chairs for regional chemotherapy programs, new infant cribs for the Paediatrics 1B unit, and automatic dispensing units to help make medication rounds faster, easier, and safer.
These are just the tip of the iceberg. Your impact is so much bigger than most people imagine.
I would like to personally thank you for the part you played. We couldn’t make these improvements in patient care that we do without your help. Combine your donation with your neighbours’ contribution and their neighbours’ and so on, and soon you are able to work miracles.
Find out more about Your Impact at https://www.healthsciencesfoundation.ca/your-impact and see just how many lives you’ve changed.
Parker Jones