Fort St. John Community Action Team

Northern Health

AKA Healthy Fort Saint John

In early 2018, Healthy FSJ began with five people from various organizations coming together with seed funding from the University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute of Substance Use Research (formerly the Centre of Addictions Research of BC) to create an impactful collaborative that could support a community-led response to the opioid crisis in Fort St. through education, awareness and opportunity for dialogue.

Meanwhile, a group called the Fort St. John Overdose Response Committee had also been meeting out of the Fort St. John hospital monthly through 2017 and early 2018 to create a community-led response to the opioid challenges the community was experiencing. Through funding received in June 2018 from the Community Action Initiative via the BC Ministry of Mental Health and Addictions, this committee was able to formally become the Fort St. John Community Action Team. The FSJ Community Action Team is a large group of community organizations, health agencies, front-line service providers, and those with lived experience, all of whom are collectively committed to tackling the opioid crisis locally. The FSJ Community Action Team’s activities and initiatives include education, awareness, partnership development, working with Peers, resiliency training, and taking stock of existing overdose services. Healthy FSJ continues to be the vehicle for education, awareness and dialogue for this local opioid crisis response effort.

We are very proud of what our communities and organizations have accomplished together thus far, and we are excited for what we will continue to accomplish together in the future.