Manda Aufochs Gillespie/ Folk U – On February 7, 2025, host Manda Aufochs-Gillespie was joined by Elizabeth Burr to chat about concussions, brain health, and nervous system regulation. This discussion shed light on the hidden impacts of brain injuries, healing resources, and the path to recovery.
Continue reading Folk U: Concussions, Brain Health, and Nervous System Regulation
Anna Kindy was sitting in her Campbell River office. Her assistant stood almost out of the frame long enough to wave, before handing Kindy a headset and disappearing. The thing I find refreshing about Kindy is she doesn’t sound like a politician, which is understandable because she only recently became one. She and her husband are both doctors. Anna Kindy was elected as the MLA for North Island on October 19, 2024 and is the Health Critic for the Conservative party Shadow Cabinet, but has yet to sit in the legislature.
This fact emerged when I asked her about the trips between her home in Merville and the provincial legislature.
Continue reading Anna Kindy: Waiting for the legislature, the Health Crisis & Being the MLA for North Island.
By Amy Romer, Megaphone Magazine, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
For anyone who spends any time in the Downtown Eastside, or sadly any community in B.C. these days, you’ve likely walked past someone in public who looks unconscious, as though they might need your help. But as each step brings you closer to this person in need, you soon find yourself looking back at them, already convinced they’re just sleeping something off, that this person surely isn’t overdosing. Before long, something distracts you, your phone probably, and your day carries on. Until the next person. And so it continues.
Every few months, members of 312 Main in the Downtown Eastsie are privileged to receive naloxone training from Trey Helten, former manager at the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS). Naloxone (brand name Narcan) is a fast-acting medication that temporarily reverses the effects of an opioid overdose.
Continue reading Tips For Saving A Life From A Former Manager of Vancouver’s Overdose Prevention Society
Greater Campbell River continues to be one of the worst Local Health Areas in the province for unregulated drug deaths, according to the BC Coroner’s Service. Vancouver-Centre North, Terrace, Prince George and Grand Forks were also named.
So far this year, 1,925 British Columbians have lost their lives because of unregulated drug use. 155 of them died in October.
These numbers come on the heels of the Canadian Mental Health Association’s recently released State of Mental Health in Canada 2024, which reported that “32% of all apparent drug-related deaths in Canada occurred in British Columbia. This province is ground zero in the drug toxicity crisis. The high rates of housing insecurity and unaffordability, core housing need and poverty all contribute to these drug-related harms.”
Continue reading Greater Campbell River Continues To Be Among BC’s worst Local Health Areas For Toxic Drug Deaths
By Abby Luciano, North Shore News, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
A new report from the University of British Columbia suggests there is an “alarming” number of people getting spinal cord injuries while mountain biking.
Researchers found 58 people in B.C. sustained a spinal cord injury while mountain biking between 2008 and 2022. There were only three such injuries from ice hockey in the same 14-year period.
Continue reading UBC study shows ‘alarming’ number of spinal cord injuries from mountain biking
