People First Radio

A planned supportive housing site in Victoria will offer 20 spaces to men in recovery. Located at 1153 Johnson St. It’s the result of a partnership between BC Housing, the City of Victoria, and The Victoria Cool Aid Society. Angela Moran, Director of Housing and Shelters with the Victoria Cool Aid Society, spoke with People […]

A planned supportive housing development in Nanaimo aims to offer spaces for people looking to minimize exposure to substance use. Called Sparrow, it is set to go in the former Travellers Lodge on Nelson Street. Funded by the provincial HEARTH program, the building is being leased by BC Housing, and will operated by Pacifica Housing. […]

A family story of Finding Home in Nanaimo has inspired a new children’s book. Liubov Nazarenko says she and her family moved to Nanaimo from Ukraine three years ago because of the war. According to Nazarenko, one day, her daughter was missing home, and a story Nazarenko’s mom Valentyna Miliohlova told her granddaughter to help […]

On the second Saturday of every month, a group of volunteers in Victoria head out in public to offer what co-founder Bernice Rahm calls “gimmick free listening.” Rahm spoke with People First Radio about the project, called Sidewalk Talk. “We’ve had people tell us about how their partner is in the hospital and they’re not […]

The Mayor of Calwood calls a model used to bring family doctors to the community a “no-brainer”. Doug Kobayashi says that a few years ago, the small city near Victoria had zero family doctors.To try and address the problem, they looked at a model where Colwood would run its own clinic. Doctors would work as […]

Ottawa Pediatrician Dr. Shawn Kelly is calling for more focus on addressing youth opioid use. Kelly spoke with People First Radio to expand on the issues he raised in a recent editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, co-authored by Shannon Charlebois. “ I belong to a loose network of other people who do similar work. […]

Adam McInnis is a nurse practitioner who lives in London, Ont., and specializes in addictions medicine. He also has first hand experience of addiction, and is eight years sober. In addition to his own clinical work, Mcinnis works as a nurse adviser with a provincial initiative in Ontario designed to improve care for people experiencing […]

Charlotte Lee, a research fellow and chartered psychologist at The University of Bristol, says that weight gain following diagnosis of certain mental illnesses is predictable, but healthcare systems aren’t doing enough to support people through the experience. Lee was the lead author on a study that looked at the health records of over 100,000 people […]

Patty Douglas is an associate professor of disability studies at Queen’s University and author of Unmothering Autism. She also describes herself as “a mom of two neurodivergent sons, one of whom attracted the label of autism.” “Autism is a made up category just as much as it is a very real lived experience,” she said. […]

Around ten years ago, Julia Gruson-Wood put out a research call and spoke with a number of people about applied behavior analysis (ABA), which is the basis of a common intervention used with autistic children, despite drawing criticism from autistic self advocates. Gruson-Wood says many of the conversations were cagey at first, with people trying […]