President's Message

The Community Health Nurses' Initiatives Group of Ontario (CHNIG) continues to act as the voice of Community Health Nurses influencing the health care system, and health and social policy, in areas which affect the work of Community Health Nurses and the public we serve. As the new President of CHNIG, I am honoured to represent nurses across the province practicing in all areas of community health. I feel privileged to have past CHNIG presidents including Katie Dilworth, Kim Miller, and Ruth Scholfield as my mentors through this journey, and hope to build on their incredible accomplishments over the next two years.

The current CHNIG executive represents strength in community health and has representation from home health and public health practice, research and education. The level of dedication and commitment from this group continues to amaze me. Each member provides a unique experiential background and an abundance of skill that enhances our ability to meet the goals and objectives of CHNIG. Beyond our executive, we also have an incredible group of volunteers who participate on working groups such as Political Action and Advocacy and Professional Practice. These groups are essential in ensuring that we can continue to meet the continued demand for consultation and support on community health nursing and healthy public policy related issues that are regularly entrusted to us.

The political environment that we are currently in is certainly tense, and it is vitally important that nurses recognize the power that they can have to influence change. We are looking towards renewal of the healthcare system as we know it, and CHNIG pledges to support RNAO as they "strive to protect and expand our universal, publicly funded health-care system so everyone has equal access to comprehensive care". I would encourage you to visit the Policy and Political Action page of the RNAO website to stay up-to-date and find opportunities to ensure that your voice is heard. http://rnao.ca/policy

Over the last few years we have worked very hard to ensure that our members have access to the current initiatives that the executive are involved in. As a result we have updated our website, launched a Facebook page, and even started to "tweet" through our Twitter account. I do my very best to maintain regular contact with our membership through these social media networks and would invite each of you to "like" our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter.

CHNIG continues to be a strong and vital interest group of RNAO, and I look forward to serving as its president over the next few years.