Diabetes organization faces government axe after 20 years of serving north

There are a lot of people running diabetes programs across northern Ontario who do not know what is going to happen when the Northern Diabetes Health Network (NDHN) closes its doors on Nov. 30.
For 20 years the NDHN has helped set up, fund, support and connect a range of diabetes programs and services across northern Ontario, from the Manitoba border through to Sudbury.
The organization was built at a time when diabetes was not the epidemic it is today, on a model that had not been seen before. Over the past two decades it has succeeded in creating a network of specialized programs and practitioners across the north for adult and children diabetes programs while raising awareness of a terrible disease that affects northerners at much higher rates than the rest of the province.
And in two weeks time, due to a provincial government decision to cut its funding, NDHN will close its five offices across northern Ontario.
“It was a shock to us when (the government) said our services would no longer be required,” said Sue Griffis, NDHN’s CEO. “To shut down something that worked well in northern Ontario, with no notice and no transition plan…it is concerning as it took years to build and now we are being asked to take it down in pieces with no clear plan as to where the pieces will be placed if at all.”
Griffis added that she was disappointed with the lack of notice northerners were given about the government’s plan to shut down NDHN, which has been in the works since 2008.
A ministry of health spokesperson assured Wawatay that funding for diabetes programs in communities will continue. The funding is being shifted from NDHN to the local health integrated networks (LHINs) already running health programming in northwestern and northeastern Ontario, according to David Jensen, media relations coordinator with the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care.
The government argues its plan will “strengthen oversight of the programs” and help integrate diabetes programs with other health services.
“The ministry is committed to addressing the growing prevalence of diabetes in the province,” Jensen wrote in an e-mail response to Wawatay News. “The ministry is introducing a transition plan that will ensure the ongoing availability of NDHN-funded programs by maintaining their current level of funding and ensuring that Ontarians including adults, children, and Aboriginal and First Nations communities, will continue to access diabetes programs without interruption.”
Jensen also said that cost savings associated with the change will be used to “enhance or expand” diabetes programs in northern Ontario, although he could give no firm estimate of how much those savings are expected to be.
Despite Ontario’s optimism that shutting down NDHN will result in cost savings and eventually an increase in diabetes programming in communities, people who run diabetes programs in northern Ontario are not so sure.
A number of program operators told Wawatay that they are waiting to see what will happen after Nov. 30. Others were more blunt in their criticism of the decision, worried that they will lose a key advocate for northern diabetes programming and important networks with similar programs across the north.
“We’ve been funded by NDHN for 15 years, and it has always ensured that we’ve been connected with other professionals, and other programs and resources, as opposed to being sort of forgotten about because we’re so far away,” said Beth Fox, the coordinator of Weeneebayko Diabetes Health Program serving the Mushkegowuk communities of James Bay coast.
Fox added that because the LHINs are split between northeastern and northwestern Ontario, she worries that the Weeneebayko program will lose its connection to similar programs in remote First Nations communities in northwestern Ontario.
Minnie Jeffries, a registered nurse and certified diabetes educator with Weeneebayko, expressed another concern with the loss of NDHN – that the valuable Northern Ontario Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative (NOADI) will be lost or altered in the transition.
The Aboriginal diabetes initiative has been operating as a program within NDHN since 2007, focused on diabetes prevention education in First Nations and Metis communities across northern Ontario. Through NOADI, 350 workshops and community events have been run across the north, focused on diabetes awareness and prevention for a high-risk population.
Weeneebayko, like many community-based diabetes programs, does not have programs geared at prevention of diabetes. The program relies on NOADI to bring in speakers or conduct programs on healthy living in order to educate people in the communities who are at risk of getting
diabetes.
While Jensen said that funding for NOADI will not be affected by the decision to shut down NDHN, no one seems sure what form the organization will take once NDHN ends.
Current NOADI staff, employed through NDHN, are expecting to lose their jobs at the end of November, and people running programs in the communities, such as Jeffries, have not been given any information as to what the future of the Aboriginal diabetes initiative holds.
“We really need prevention programs,” said Jeffries. “Our focus is on educating people with diabetes, so we look to NOADI for prevention (workshops and programs) for people who do not have diabetes.”
Jensen said the ministry will work with affected partners to “consider all options and put in place a plan that will meet the needs of First Nations and Aboriginal communities in the north.”
He said that in the meantime, the ministry will operate NOADI.
Yet with only two weeks until NDHN closes its doors for good, details of how and when the government expects to create its plan for NOADI have not yet been released to the public or the community-based program operators.