Niverville town council is excited to establish a health task force to look at some of the health needs of the community.

That according to Mayor Myron Dyck. He says the task force will focus on attracting and retaining doctors and medical staff. He notes Niverville has been very blessed to have Dr. Chris and Mairi Burnett, but they will need to plan for the future. Dyck says the topic of cessation planning has come up with Dr. Chris over the last few years.

"What happens when they wish to retire? They feel very connected to the community. They obviously don't want to leave the community in the lurch and so they said this is something that a community needs to consider because attracting doctors to rural communities, there is not exactly a line-up, we began to brainstorm and from that, we need to do a review of what the town needs to do."

Dyck says though Niverville town council has many strengths, they do not have a lot of experience or know-how in the health field so they decided a task force with experienced professionals would be the best way to proceed.

"We are trying to be proactive and say 'let's identify what a town might need to do at a municipal level and let's identify the stakeholders and the people of professional expertise that could provide that information to council' so that council could have a bit of a game plan going forward."

Dyck notes the task force will be chaired by Former Regional Health Board Member Norm Klippenstein who has a wealth of experience on various boards and is still quite connected to the health community and to other levels of government. He adds the task force will also include Former Southern Health CEO Kathy McPhail.

"Kathy McPhail obviously having just recently retired from CEO of Southern Health, to ask her to come alongside to be a consultant and facilitator for us brings a wealth of information and knowledge and it would still be very recent as far as where are things going and realistically what should council be considering. We a very happy that she has accepted our request to be on this board."

Dyck says Gordon Daman, the Vice-President of Niverville Heritage Holdings will represent the Heritage Centre, and Councilor Nathan Dueck will represent Niverville Town Council. He says Open Health Niverville and Niverville Health and Community Foundation have not yet named their representatives to the task force.

Dyck says town council is hoping to have a report from the task force by November so they can use it in their yearly planning session.