As many of you know, VPSA is working on its next strategic plan. This will guide our actions over the next three years, beginning with the 2024/25 fiscal year until the 2026/27 one. Thank you to the 160 members who took the time to complete the survey we ran earlier. This has provided us with valuable information. We are now at the point where we are talking with key players, including VA and VC senior leaders.

We’re asking how effective you feel we’ve been in improving overall engagement and where we can improve. We’re talking about ways to increase collaboration between VPSA and VCH to help set, prioritize, and achieve goals together. We also want to know how effective people feel VPSA has been in its work on its current priorities: wellness; equity, diversity, and inclusion; planetary health; Clinical Systems Transformation; Indigenous health, and physician-led projects.

Once we’ve gathered information from these semi-structured interviews, the board will hold a retreat in November. Our focus will be on analyzing this information and forming our next set of priorities. These will be reviewed with VCH senior leadership so we can ensure collaboration. We are aiming for our next strategic plan to be published in February in time to inform the activities of our next fiscal year, which begins on April 1st.

My colleague, Dr. Ka Wai Cheung will assume the position as VMDAS and VPSA’s president at our December 4th annual general meeting. It has been my pleasure to work with her and our fellow board members over these past years. Dr. Cheung recently represented VMDAS and VPSA at a VCH MSA presidents’ table. This was the first time MSA representatives from all the health authorities have met in person since before the pandemic. By all reports, the meeting was a good venue for sharing ideas, successes, and concerns. We are enthusiastic to see this forum continue and the work that can come about from our collaboration.

It has been an honour to serve as your president. We have been through some challenging times together and come out the stronger for it. I hope to see as many members as possible at our AGM. We’ll have information on ways to register in upcoming issues of your weekly Checkup newsletter.

Sincerely,

Dr. Alison Harris, President
VPSA/VMDAS