By working together, the Canadian Cancer Society, Northern Health and the B.C. Cancer Agency believe they can lower cancer rates in the region.
The collaboration was made possible by a recent grant by the Canadian Cancer Society and will allow the three organizations to better spread the word about quitting smoking, especially before surgery, and continue to raise the profile of men's health.
"When we work together with partnerships, it just helps to broaden the reach of all our organizations," Canadian Cancer Society Margaret Jones-Bricker said. "Broadening the reach is just going to broaden the message and if you can broaden your message and get one or two more people get that message, then we're helping people across the north to understand there are ways and means to reduce the potential for them to actually get cancer."
The programs themselves aren't new ideas, but the groups hope by working together they'll be able to amplify the message and get more people on board.
"We know we can't do things alone," Northern Health regional director for public health, population and protection Lucy Beck said. "This is a real opportunity for us to work with other agencies that are doing similar kind of work."
The three agencies came together last year with the idea of seeking funding to better co-ordinate their activities. They submitted a formal application earlier this year and recently found out the Canadian Cancer Society's research institute will grant them $930,000 over four years to implement the joint approach and analyze the results.
Once the programs are fully implemented, the goal is to give all patients who smoke and are scheduled for elective surgery the proper support they need during the pre-operative, operative and recovery phases to quit smoking.
Beck said that means working with the staff at hospitals in Prince George and Prince Rupert to make sure they are giving patients every opportunity to quit.
"We know that always we can bring information to people and sometimes we can get a change in behaviour and sometimes we can't," Beck said.
For the men, the focus will be on encouraging healthier eating and more exercise as ways to reduce cancer in the long term.
Northern Health is already leading the way in the province with some of its men's health programming - it recently launched guide on healthy living dubbed the MANual - and Beck said they're hoping to grow the program from a position of strength.
"There's a lot of real interest and lot of people are willing to make those [lifestyle] changes, but they're not really aware of methods to do that," she said, adding the group is still a year away from fully launching the men's health programming.
The men's health campaigns will be done primarily in Prince George and Dawson Creek.
Although the programs will be run in the north, the research on their effectiveness will be done by Prof. Joan Bottorff at the UBC-Okanagan campus in Kelowna. Bottorff, who has expertise as a team leader in areas around cancer prevention, helped put together the funding application and will analyze the results.
"This is the first project that I'm involved in that involves such a large region of the north," Bottorff said. "I'm looking forward to working with everyone up there on this project."
Jones-Bricker said ultimately the lessons learned in northern B.C. can be used elsewhere in Canada.
"We want to inform other regions across the country ways in which partnering can reduce the burden of cancer," she said.
