West Central Alberta residents living with chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, asthma, high blood pressure, chronic pain and obesity are being offered renewed help with launching a new workshop program.Alberta Health Services unveiled the Better Choices, Better Health provincewide initiative last week. Under the program, trained volunteers and AHS staff will lead workshop sessions in about 60 communities, including in towns in this region over the next 12 months.The workshop sessions will address health topics such as handling pain and fatigue, management of medications, dealing with difficult emotions, healthy eating and activity, problem solving and goal setting, and communicating with health-care providers, officials say.Sundre physician Dr. Hal Irvine says the program should be a good resource for residents across the district.ìIt sounds like a fabulous program to help people with those diseases,î Dr. Irvine told the Gazette. ìThis will help empower people to take charge of their disease process and look after themselves better and to monitor their symptoms.ìIt certainly makes our jobs as physicians so much easier if the patient is interested and involved and feels that they are in charge of their disease process. It lets us work together as a team and much more likely be successful.îPhysicians in the region recently met with the chronic disease program manager for the Central Zone to discuss the initiative, he said.ìIt sounds quite exciting in empowering people to look after themselves and be more in charge of their health. And that's very important,î he said.In West Central Alberta, the once-a-week workshops will be held over about six weeks in most towns over the next year.Dr. Peter Sargious, Medical Director of Chronic Disease with AHS, echoed Dr. Irvine's comments, calling the project a great way to empower patients and their families.ìWe've run these programs throughout the province in the past,î Sargious said in a statement issued by AHS. ìWhat we've been able to do now is bring those programs together under one name, Better Choices, Better Health, and to provide workshops that are consistent regardless of where you live.îMaureen Mailer, area manager for primary care and chronic disease management in the Central Zone, said organizers hope that by making the programs free of charge they will encourage more people to participate.ìWe've removed any cost associated with this,î she told the Gazette. ìPreviously each zone called this type of program something different. This time we are getting organized at a provincial basis so it helps having the same name for the program, making it consistent.îParticipants are loaned a manual that goes along with the workshops so they can do supplementary reading if they choose.Workshop times and dates for the various communities in West Central Alberta are available at www.albertahealthservices.ca/bcbh.asp.The Better Choices, Better Health program comes following a pilot project that saw about 190 Albertans participate in an online self-management workshop.The program itself is part of the larger recently launched AHS Obesity Initiative, a five-year effort to prevent and manage obesity in Alberta launched last month.ìWe've reached our first goal of bringing together all self-management programs in the province but this is really just the beginning,î said Dr. Sargious. ìWe're laying the foundation for future growth.îMore information on the program is also available by calling Health Link Alberta at 1-866-408-5465.
