The BC Brain Wellness Program Celebrates its Second Anniversary!
Photo by Emilio Guzman on Unsplash
When the BC Brain Wellness Program first launched on October 5, 2019, no one could have foreseen that, within just two years, events would catapult us into becoming, instantaneously, a truly province-wide program with participants from across Canada, and even in Europe! In March 2020, when the pandemic caused us to have to pivot from in-person classes and presentations to online zoom events, we quickly picked up new participants from all across the province, from Prince George to Victoria, and Burnaby to Rossland. We now serve over 1200 participants over 27 classes.
Here are some highlights from our “24 Milestones in 24 Months”:
Our “Wellness Wednesday” webinars have proven to be so popular, regularly pulling in over 100 viewers, that we have recently launched the new “Research Seminar Series”
We are always keen to hear from participants about what works and what doesn’t work for them and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. In this spirit, we have created a Participants’ Advisory Committee (PAC) of 12 enthusiastic volunteer members. We anticipate that their feedback will help the program become even more relevant, useful and therapeutic for our participants.
We are so proud of the establishment of a relationship with the student-led exercise clinic at UBC, which has the dual benefits of allowing us to expand our program, while offering learning opportunities for physical therapy students. We are also now collaborating with University Hospital of Northern British Columbia in Prince George to provide programming through a similar student-led clinic there.
The BC Brain Wellness Program is both a research program as well as a program delivery program. Current research projects include the Impact 360 project (investigating the effects of the BC Brain Wellness Program on health) and the Music and PD Apathy project (testing whether listening to personalized, motivating music can treat apathy in Parkinson’s Disease).
On the program side, the success of our nine-month online program for care partners has inspired us to launch a follow-up program next month
We are constantly trying to improve accessibility to our programs and so, to that end, we are now collaborating with the UBC Language Departments to translate our educational materials into other languages.
This is just a snapshot of our milestones. Visit our website for a full description of our “24 Milestones in 24 Months”, and for new initiatives and opportunities to be involved.
At this time, we would like to offer our deepest gratitude to the growing numbers of dedicated volunteers and donors who make the continuation of the program possible and, of course, the participants. We would not be here without you!