The Regional Seasonal Readiness Working Group Team has earned a Best Collaboration Award for exceptional leadership in preparing Fraser Health for climate-related emergencies through cross-sector teamwork.
Photo (from left to right): Scott Blessin, senior director, Lower Mainland Emergency Management, Health Emergency Management BC; Dr. Emily Newhouse, medical health officer; Amanda Laboucane, interim vice president, Indigenous Health and Cultural Safety; and Daniel Vigue, director, Supply Management and Utilization
Heat, smoke, fires, floods — when climate emergencies strike, Fraser Health is ready, thanks to the Regional Seasonal Readiness Working Group.
Formed after the 2021 heat dome and atmospheric river, the group brings together more than 30 experts — medical leaders, operational leaders, supply chain experts and climate health specialists to strengthen resilience across the region.
“Our team helps prepare ourselves as a health system as well as our communities for seasonal events like heat, smoke or extreme cold events that could threaten our health,” explains Dr. Emily Newhouse, medical health officer.
Collaboration is at the heart of their success. “It’s a very large collaborative and we’re truly drawing on all operational teams,” says Scott Blessin, senior director, Lower Mainland Emergency Management, Health Emergency Management BC.
Tracie Jones, manager, Clinical Operations, adds: “Whether in the community, acute care or facilities, we all come together with the same focus and the same goal.”
Learn more about the team's inspiring work:
The team is passionate about building readiness across the system. From heat vulnerability assessments and cooling strategies in hospitals to smoke response plans and air filter initiatives for communities, the team ensures readiness at every level. They advance climate warning systems, enhance staff training and assess risks each season to keep Fraser Health prepared for whatever comes.
“During the development of heat and smoke plans, the team facilitated workshops with staff from various departments to gather input and address concerns about cooling in both acute and long-term care sites,” says Tracie. This resulted in practical solutions like window coverings and air conditioner procurement.
Supply chain management is another critical factor. Daniel Vigue, director, Supply Management and Utilization, explained that the pandemic illuminated for many the importance of a well-managed supply chain and the need to prepare and ensure we have resources ready.
Rigorous planning and a proactive approach are essential to ensure continuity of care in the face of an emergency.
“If we don’t plan and prepare and practice, we will not be able to continue to provide our services that are needed throughout the region if any of these events occur,” says Dr. Ingrid Tyler, vice president, Population Health and chief medical health officer.
The team regularly conducts mock exercises to ensure readiness long before an actual disruption. They run drills for various outages and disruptions and practice activating back up plans. On the supply chain side, they practice responses to transportation route disruptions, network outages and product shortages to keep essential products flowing.
The group takes a lessons-learned approach to emergency preparedness.
“In 2021, we saw some tragic outcomes from the events that we experienced,” recalls Dr. Newhouse. “One of the important pieces of having a group like this is that when those new events do happen, we have a framework we can fall back on to collaborate.”
That framework is actively used. “Our Public Health team regularly uses this table as a place to share updates to provincial systems like the B.C. Heat Alert and Response System and to share health outcome data to give people a sense of what types of impacts we are seeing, given our current levels of response,” Dr. Newhouse shares. The same collaboration helped Home Health develop comprehensive risk assessment and check-in plans for their clients, guided by feedback from the team.
Real-world examples show the impact.
“Wildfire response is a strong example,” says Daniel. “During the Yellowknife evacuation in 2023, planning allowed us to quickly mobilize patient transport and coordinate safe transfers — an approach we also used during smoke and evacuation orders in Merritt and Kelowna.” Fraser Health’s central-hub role supported Northern B.C. during wildfire season by sending essential supplies when regular routes were disrupted.
From waste handling to patient transport and supplies, the team builds contingencies into every step — ready to reroute, rebalance and activate back-ups instantly, digitally when possible and manually when necessary.
During a network outage that disrupted patient transport booking, those practiced workflows enabled a fast shift to phone-based processes and redeployed staff resulting in continuity of service.
The group values their working relationships and partnerships to build strong ties with municipalities, emergency agencies and Indigenous partners, including the First Nations Health Authority and Métis Nation British Columbia, ensuring culturally safe responses.
“Our team has had the great honour and privilege of connecting directly with Indigenous communities who have been impacted by various floods, fires, evacuations, medical emergencies, health crises,” Interim Vice President, Indigenous Health and Cultural Safety Amanda Laboucane says. “To know that the work we are collaboratively doing in partnership to support people in community, close to home in a way that feels safe and culturally appropriate for them truly means everything.”
From planning to practice, the team is building a safer, stronger, collaborative response to climate challenges and shaping a resilient future.
Congratulations to the Regional Seasonal Readiness Working Group Team – recipient of a Best Collaboration Award.