Active Living Alliance and Attitudes to Activity
February 11, 2013
Hosted by Dr. Gordon Atherley
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Guest Information
Episode Description
Jason Dunkerley, http://www.ala.ca/content/home.asp, and his guide runner Josh Karanja won bronze in the 1500 metres and silver in the 5000 metres for totally blind athletes at the 2012 London Paralympic Games. Andy Shaw, andyshaw56@gmail.com, a journalist, is Canadian Press Chief at MEDICA, the world’s largest annual medical trade fair and has been a reporter at six Olympic Games. Jason talks about the Special Olympics and the Paralympics. Andy says how a radio journalist would report on the Special Olympics and the Paralympics. They discuss messages that the Active Living Alliance, which Jason works for, wants to send to family caregivers about the value of active living for family members with special needs and how radio broadcasting can help get the message out and influence attitudes. They say what they want to do and see done to promote active living for children, young persons and adults with special needs, and share their messages for parents of children with special needs.
Family Caregivers Unite!
Archives Available on VoiceAmerica Variety Channel
Family caregivers are the people who provide care to partners, parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, friends, neighbors and even co-workers. They are the people who provide care when everyone else has gone home. They are the people who organize the functioning of the home for the person with special needs, and for the family as a whole. They are the coordinators of care, the managers of appointments, the preventers of loneliness, and the makers of decisions even to the point of Power of Attorney. And they are so often people who themselves are burdened with their own health challenges and who may be in only marginally better health than the persons to whom they are providing family caregiving.
Dr. Gordon Atherley
Dr Gordon Atherley holds the British equivalent of the Canadian PhD and MD degrees, and LLD, Honoris Causa, from Canada’s Simon Fraser University. His awards include Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, UK. His medical specialties are occupational medicine and public health.
As first President and Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Canadian equivalent of the US National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, he led the creation of Canada’s electronic information service in occupational health and safety, now used in more than 40 countries.
In academia, he held senior, tenured, full-time positions, including departmental chair, in university faculties of physics, engineering, and medicine. He is the author of a textbook and numerous articles and publications.
Since retiring from medical practice, he’s built up Greyhead Associates, which critically researches the safety, effectiveness and fairness of health services for persons with special needs.
Through Virtual Care International, a company of which he’s President, he’s involved in providing sensible technology to family caregivers to help them with their responsibilities, workloads, and concerns.
Now an activist, he urges family caregivers to unite because, more and more, it’s not just their families who depend on them, it’s also the healthcare system as a whole, as it struggles to meet more and more needs of more and more people.