Tell us what your team is about? What are your current priorities?
The Healthy Living Team is comprised of 9 Healthy Living Facilitators (HLFs) that work in communities across Southern Health-Santé Sud. Our goal is to empower healthy, more equitable communities in which individuals and families live, learn, work and play.

Each community has various strengths and capacities when it comes to the social determinants of health. HLFs combine their knowledge with communities’ expertise to brainstorm community-driven solutions that optimize the social determinants of health. This may look like sharing grant opportunities, new ideas or perspectives to problems, networking among folks in similar situations, helping navigate systems, skill building, and much more. Examples of what we’re involved with currently include enhancing financial empowerment/benefits clinics, mental wellbeing initiatives, active transportation, inclusion and belonging, anti-racism, just to name a few.

This is a busy time of year for you. Tell us what healthy living events and initiatives are underway?
We are currently working on:

• Love my Community – an initiative promoting mental health and social connection in communities, schools and other organizations/groups across Southern Manitoba. The idea is to promote the spread of kindness, create joy, and build relationships.
• Annual Share & Learn Conference
• Art for Mental Health Grant
• Healthy Together Now Grant 2025 – we received 155 applications and are in the process of awarding grants and checking in with applicants.
• Developing a personalized land acknowledgement for the Healthy Living team

What is something that your program offers that we may not know about?
We love to be invited to join in community initiatives! Whether it’s to brainstorm ideas, bring stakeholders together, celebrate wins, we’d love to work together!

How can we help your team spread the word about healthy living initiatives?
We encourage staff and community members to explore our community update articles, which are housed on the public site. We would like to increase our social media presence and encourage staff and the public to follow SH-SS accounts. Lastly, we welcome any opportunity to connect and collaborate with staff.

Submitted by: Healthy Living Team