Your Voice Matters! Community members include patients, clients, families, caregivers and citizens. The voices of community members provide a crucial contribution to the success of the Frontenac, Lennox & Addington Ontario Health Team (FLA OHT).
We would love to hear your voice!
To share your story as a community member - click HERE.
To become a community member volunteer, please complete the application - click HERE.
Two types of community member volunteers
Associate Community Members:
volunteer with the FLA OHT on an as-need basis for engagement, sharing their lived experience, interests, skills and abilities. These members:
- Have no commitment to attend monthly meetings.
- Contribute experience and knowledge through other opportunities.
- Participate through surveys/focus groups and other opportunities
- Are invited to Partnership Council's Town Hall meetings
Community Council Members:
volunteer with the FLA OHT group for a two-year term, attending monthly meetings, and sharing their lived experience, interests, skills, and abilities. These members play:
- An advisory role to FLA OHT leadership - keeping the patient experience at the forefront of discussions and organizational expectations.
- A role engaging in early planning and co-design of our OHT work, with an equal voice at the table.
Learn more about the Community Council
Welcome Package
The Community Council Welcome Package for new members provides information of who we are and how you can contribute to building a new health-care system.
Meet the Co-chairs
Community Council is co-chaired by two dedicated community members, who have both been involved in health care for many years - Allan Katz and Dorothyanne Brown.
Principles and Values
The Community Council upholds many principles and values in all the work they do. These include being inclusive, collaborative, respectful, transparent, and much more.
Community Council Spotlights (scroll with buttons < >)
Kerry Stewart
April 8, 2025. The FLA OHT is proud to feature Kerry Stewart, a dedicated member of the FLA OHT Community Council and Access to Primary Care Working Group. Kerry brings a unique perspective to our work and health-care co-design efforts.
Gerhard Wendt
January 30, 2025. The FLA OHT is pleased to introduce Gerhard Wendt, a member of Community Council, who champions the representation of community voices in the digital design and delivery of local health care.
Arthur Ronald
December 6, 2024. The FLA OHT is pleased to introduce Arthur Ronald, a new new member of the Community Council. Arthur is a lifelong health and wellness advocate, who brings decades of experience in health care.
Michael Judd
October 11, 2024. The FLA OHT is pleased to introduce Michael Judd, a dynamic new member of Community Council. Michael brings decades of experience, commitment to advocacy and passion to his new role.
Helen Cooper
June 6, 2023. Helen Cooper lives in the city of Kingston. She spoke to us about her views on aging, programs and activities for seniors in the region and what motivated them to get involved with the FLA OHT.
Engaging Diverse Community Members
Indigenous Community
We are committed to engaging with Indigenous Peoples and community members in a good way, using Indigenous teachings and tools in our work, incorporating the community’s suggestions and building stronger partnerships.
Francophone Community
We are engaging the Francophone community with a commitment to remove linguistic barriers to care and build an accessible health and wellness system for all. Together we developed a translation strategy and a lexicon.
Equity-Deserving Community
We are working to make health care available to everyone in a way that strives to meet their needs, respect their cultural and linguistic preferences and eliminate barriers to care.
FLA OHT Engagement Framework
Ontario Health Teams (OHTs) are mandated to include patient, family, people with lived and living experiences and care partner engagement in all of our work in planning, design and decision-making processes.
The FLA OHT has co-designed our engagement framework with partners to guide and support meaningful engagement by building on best practices and previous efforts. The framework provides a step-by-step process for preparing, planning, and involving people in co-design efforts. The goal is to create a health and wellness system that reflects, responds to, and meets the diverse needs of the communities it serves.
Effective engagement requires being guided by the voices of the people who use the system and actively involving and empowering them at all levels of decision-making. This includes ensuring representation and inclusion of individuals with unique health service needs, such as Francophone, Indigenous, and equity-deserving communities.
Journey mapping - understanding how people access care
What is journey mapping?
This visual engagement tool is used to better understand a person's experience navigating health care - it captures environmental and contextual factors of accessing care.
Study results: primary care access for those without a provider
We conducted a study on journey mapping of an unattached person’s access to primary care.
Study results: primary care access for those with a provider
We conducted a study on journey mapping of an attached person’s primary care visit.