Crews will be busy at work at the former St. Anthony’s School building this summer to launch the Hope Clinic come the fall.
Now that the Catholic school has completed its move, Hope Health is in the process of leasing the former school and are aiming for November 1 to launch the first phase of its initiative.
“That will be our target date for the first patient, so it is not far away,” said Jon Ohlhauser, project leader of Hope Health Ventures.
The Hope Health Initiative has a goal to eventually open a post secondary institution, clinic and research centre. The first move is to establish a naturopathic practitioner to begin practice with a unique delivery method to capitalize on an underserved market. They have been working to recruit a practitioner and over the last few months have hosted free talks from some practicing in the naturopathic field. Ohlhauser says they are close to appointing a practitioner. They are also looking at recruiting a counselling professional.
“We have a couple of good strong candidates, but in the process we haven’t really had any local interest in the counselling position yet, and we would welcome that,” said Ohlhauser. “The counselling position is a hand in glove position with a naturopath because a naturopath will sit down with you and get an overall picture of your health. They may discover it is physical deficiency or vitamin deficiency or they might find it is something more psychological going on.”
While the Hope College Venture is a joint initiative, Ohlhauser said the clinic is complementary to the college but a separate private operation. He said funds pledged by community members are not directed toward the clinic but the college arm.
“The college is sort of waiting to hear from Alberta Advanced Education. We’ve submitted a number of programs for licensing and once we receive official approval from Advance Education, then we will announce we are starting the college,” said Ohlhauser.
He is confident they will get approval for the programs in the near future.
