A lot of attention is paid to the reactive side of health care and maybe not enough to the preventative side.
That is part of impetus behind a $1,700 grant Sunrise Health Region recently supplied to the Yorkton Public Library to buy new books about preventative health.
Louise Bélanger, who oversees the region's Health Promotion grants said the library's application was a good fit for their mandate and offered good value.
"One of the reasons the library received the grant is that when people think about health they usually think about our hospital system or our acute care system, but my area, we think about the health of the community and libraries are an actual hub for communities and provide a lot of support and resources for people," Belanger said. "People can access health resources throughout our entire health region through this one library system."
She added that much of the library's health collection had been lost to flooding in 2010 and what was left was outdated.
"To constantly keep updating the information that our community people can access is really important, so [the library] fit well within the Health Promotion grant criteria."
After the library received the money in October 2013, assistant chief librarian Lori Borsi set about ordering the most up-to-date books she could find. The books started arriving over the last month and as of last week the collection is on display at the library.
Borsi said they have updated the whole gamut of health topics some of which are children's health and wellness, cancer, grief and dealing with grief, fitness and mental health.
"It's extremely important," she said.
Anyone within the Parkland library system can borrow the books from their own local branch.
And Borsi still has money left to spend so the collection will continue to grow into 2015 titles as well.
Beyond that, Health Promotion grants are usually not available on an ongoing basis, but Bélanger said the region would continue to work with the library.
"We do have access to other resources and other granting opportunities so depending on the success of how people utilize these resources we can look at other ways to fund it."
