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New Revelstoke health services website creators looking for feedback

The site, revelstokelife.ca, lists both community and medical health services
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The website launched in early December and now the creators are looking for feedback.

A new website, revelstokelife.ca, has every medical and health professional in Revelstoke listed in one place.

Created by Stacie Byrne, Jill Zacharias and Katherine Brown of the CYMHSU, the city and the Rural and Remote Division of family practice, the site is meant to be a tool for both professionals to refer their patients as well as the general public seeking health services.

“Knowledge of what services are available in Revelstoke has been identified by many different groups for a long time now as a barrier for accessing supports,” said Byrne.

The website launched at the beginning of December, and is an amalgamation of guides Zacharias previously put together such as the Newcomers Guide and the Seniors’ Resource Guide.

Right now the team is working with a web developer to make the website more accessible through search engines and is asking for community feedback on ease of usage and accuracy of listings.

“The whole drive has been-what are people looking for, how are they going to look for it, how can we make it easy?” said Zacharias.

If you are one of the service providers listed on the website and you would like the information updated, the team asks that you fill out the contact form that can be accessed at the top right hand side of the website.

For now, the website also features a pop up survey that users can fill out to give feedback on their experience on the website.

“In no way is this the final and we certainly encourage everyone to speak up,” Brown said.

The Revelstoke Women’s Shelter Society also chipped in funding for the project.

“One of the reasons why they contributed funded is because they really wanted to get the information about sexual assault and reporting sexual assault,” Zacharias said.

On top of ease of access to all information in a single place, one of the intents behind the website is to destigmatize accessing help for sexual assault, mental health or other services. The platform provides a neutral place for people to look for information wherever the are comfortable.

Unlike similar websites in other communities, all of the listings are local, unless the team felt they should be included, such as the Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention Centre of BC.

“What we found in other directories, often times a directory gets made and it just, by some algorithm, pulls everything in a 400 km radius and you get a whole hodge podge of pages and pages of listings,” said Brown. “We really wanted to avoid that with revelstokelife.ca.”

If you need a service that isn’t available in Revelstoke, the local medical professional that you are working with will be able to refer you to an out of town service, Zacharias said. All of the listed service providers are licensed under the applicable regulatory body.

“We really took the approach that each person in their own field is the expert in their field,” Zacharias said.

Rest assured that the website will be continually updated going into the future. The team doesn’t want it to become outdated and useless but a reliable resource for everyone in the community.