The man who had a hand (or two) in delivering babies in Cochrane for years has helped to birth the Cochrane and Area Health Foundation (CAHF).
At a news conference May 1, the trustees and supporters behind the nascent foundation announced they had received approval from the provincial health minister to launch the not-for-profit foundation.
CAHF’s vice-chair Dr. Dennis Fundytus is well known to Cochranites as a recently retired local family doctor. Kids may remember him as “Dr. Fun.”
“They certainly knew where the treats were, they knew who to talk to,” he said with a laugh, recalling his former patients. Fundytus retired from his practice in 2019.
He was reluctant to accept praise for dedicating his life to health care in Cochrane.
“Well, more importantly, Cochrane has dedicated it’s life to me,” he said. “I’ve really had an awesome career, but I also had some incredible, awesome patients.
“And those are the ones who are to some extent struggling with what we have in the community in terms of services that could be improved.”
The CAHF will be dedicated to improving the quality, provision, and access to health care for the people of Cochrane and the surrounding area.
They will be committed to working with the public, Alberta Health Services (AHS), and community partners to promote, evaluate, fundraise, educate and advocate for the improvement of health care and urgent care services.
The foundation is applying for charitable status so it will be able to issue tax receipts for fundraising activities.
Fundytus said the approvals process for the formation of the foundation has gone remarkably smoothly so far – the only thing left is to apply to the Canada Revenue Agency for charitable status.
“We’re ready to roll in terms of fundraising and working with the various health providers and AHS and ready to go forward,” he said.
Now the real work of the foundation begins.
That real work will initially focus on two specific areas in need of improvement before moving on to become a vehicle for overall health care improvements.
“We will work with the various health providers to improve health delivery with the ultimate goal to get better ambulance service, and work with AHS to get 24/7 urgent care.”
In addition to those initial specific priority goals, Fundytus said a wide variety of health-care providers will also benefit from the foundation’s work.
“There are many facets to health-care delivery in the community, and the scope of the foundation is such that it’s not going to end once we get those two goals accomplished,” he said.
One of the first tasks will be to gather feedback from Cochranites on what improvements they’d like to see regarding local health care delivery.
“We hope to be a sounding board for the public in terms of ideas on how to improve services – the whole level of service in the community,” Fundytus said.
The retired physician stressed that the way to affect real change in health care is to work co-operatively with AHS. Historically, the debates over health care delivery between providers and users have tended to be couched in confrontational, sometimes rancorous terms.
Fundytus said the new foundation will look to change that approach with AHS, adding that antagonism with the health authority is an ineffective method.
“Over the last months, the whole process, it’s been very collaborative, very supportive,” he said. “In many ways our goals are the same – to improve health care services.”
He singled out the work of chair Brian Winter as being instrumental in seeing the foundation come into existence in a short time.
Fundytus said AHS was very helpful in fast-tracking the paperwork behind bringing the idea of a Cochrane-based health foundation to fruition. The idea to form such a group was inspired by a similar foundation in Airdrie that has similar objectives and mandates.
The CAHF website is up and running at cochranehealthfoundation.ca
The board of trustees will be comprised of chair Brian Winter; vice-chair Dennis Fundytus; secretary Stephanie Meakin; treasurer Stephanie Arnal; fundraising Phyllis Konrad; communications Reid Kimmett; business community Chuck Collins; and area representative Robert Cameron.
