Before our February 17th Annual Distinguished Lecture, which was attended by approximately 225 people, we were thrilled to present the 2016 University of Regina Centre on Aging & Health (CAH) Award for Innovation in Health Care Delivery to Gretta Lynn Ell of the Regina Qu’Appelle Health Region (RQHR).
The award recognizes Regina-based individuals, groups, or organizations offering health care to older adults. The winner has introduced an innovative approach to service provision or has conducted field research to evaluate services or programs for older persons.
We received many outstanding nominations but our adjudication committee, which consisted exclusively of seniors from Regina, selected Gretta Lynn Ell, Executive Director Continuing Care, Programming & Utilization for RQHR, for developing many programs related to long-term care and other areas that benefit seniors over her more than forty-five years working in health care.
According to her nominators, Gretta Lynn is a leader and innovator in long-term care with an impressive ability to provide “the right service, at the right time, in the right format, and in the right place” and has done plenty to allow clients to remain at home (or in the least intrusive alternate living arrangement). “She believes that extended lengths of stay in hospital awaiting placement are to be avoided whenever possible. This philosophy has led to the development of several innovative programs that have had a significant positive impact on the lives of thousands of people.”
Some of the programs she has helped develop include, but are not limited to, the Convalescent Care and Orthopedic Convalescent Care, the Quick Response Unit, the Alternate Level of Care Unit, the Hammond Assessment and Stabilization Unit and Mental Health Long-Term Care Program, Specialized Dementia Care, and the Acquired Brain Injury Unit. These are in addition to traditional programs such as respite care, dementia care, adult day support, and palliative care.
While accepting the award, Gretta Lynn said “I’m not usually a person of few words, but when I heard about the award I was absolutely speechless.” She then took time to mention her colleagues at RQHR and that it is because she works with such a stellar group that she able to “stand here with this great honour and be completely humbled.” She also said that she and her team in Regina “look forward to continuing to make improvements” to the lives of older adults.
The CAH congratulates Gretta Lynn for her dedication to health care delivery. We would also like to acknowledge our magnificent adjudication committee— Ms. Linda Anderson, Dr. Joan Roy, and Ms. Marj Thiessen—for helping select our worthy winner.
For more information, or to nominate an individual or organization for next year’s award, please visit http://www2.uregina.ca/cah/ or contact Scott J. Wilson, CAH Administrator, at scott.j.wilson@uregina.ca or (306) 337-8477.
We will present results of our Healthy Seniors Pilot Project on Thurs, June 26, 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. and discuss how different stakeholders can work together to help ensure older adults get adequate immunization coverage. Registration link: https://ow.ly/lSnP50Wala7 @GovCanHealth
Congratulations to the CLSA Catalyst Grant recipients!
Learn more: https://tinyurl.com/yh4axrue
Nominations are now open for the 2025 Betty Havens Prize for Knowledge Mobilization in Aging!
Recognizing outstanding KM efforts that have made a difference in the lives of older adults at the local or regional level.
Learn more: https://tinyurl.com/2naxxdt8
#KnowledgeMobilization
📅Mark your calendars! Join us on June 24 for a webinar on exploring what #accessibility means in the context of #AgeTech. Learn about the intersecting barriers that contribute to digital exclusion & strategies to improve accessibility. Register today: https://shorturl.at/cqscR
The CAH congratulates Dr. V. Puplampu (Faculty of Nursing) and her international team on their remarkable research and success as a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute of Aging Planning and Dissemination Grant recipient.
The team working on the project "Older Adults’ Experience of Vulnerability and Inequity in Recovering from the Pandemic’ were hosted by Dr. Puplampu on the U of R campus in May 2025.
We studied the impact of ageism and pain on pandemic stress among older adults. Our findings suggest that both ageism and pain influence pandemic-related stress, although ageism mediated pain's impact on pandemic stress. @UofRAgingCentre @gjgasmundson
The Impact of Ageism and Pain on Pandemic-Related Stress in Older Adults: A Structural Equation...
Although research has linked ageism and pain to increased stress in older adults, their influence on stress within ...
journals.sagepub.com