Health
Primary Care Network offers all kinds of services for bolstering health and wellness
The Primary Care Network offers a tremendous range of programming all geared to helping folks live their healthiest lives.
Staff at the local office, located at 5120 47 St., are excited about launching into 2022 with a spectrum of workshops from Anxiety to Calm, Happiness Basics and Moving on With Persistent Pain to Relationships in Motion, Sleep and Journey Through Grief.
Others include My Way to Health (formerly Health Basics), Strong and Steady (which focuses on bolstering one’s strength and flexibility), and H.E.A.R.T.S which has been carefully designed to help families through the loss of a child during pregnancy or shortly after birth.
Of course, due to the pandemic, programming has been virtually all online. But there has been a silver lining with that approach, explained Lorna Milkovich, executive director.
“With our group workshops, we discovered that with going online, we were able to reach some people that we may not have reached otherwise. For some, being able to attend via Zoom offered new flexibility. Others were more comfortable with that format over in-person meetings.” Moving forward, group workshops will certainly continue to be offered in-person, but the PCN will also continue with online versions as well. “That’s exciting, because it opens the door to reaching a wider demographic.
“Through the online versions, we continued to evaluate things and receive feedback, and we continue to see really amazing results. For Anxiety to Calm for example, it consistently shows that people reduce their anxiety, on average, by 50 per cent,” she explained. “It’s amazing.” As for the programs, Milkovich noted that the popular workshop Health Basics has been re-launched as My Way to Health. “It’s a very core workshop that we would encourage most people to take,” she said, adding the sessions focus on healthy living habits including weight loss, bolstering activity and assisting with chronic pain and maintaining a healthy brain through the ageing process. Essentially, participants will learn a host of practical skills they can put into action, said Milkovich.
“It’s super important that people can make changes that are meaningful to them, and that work with their lifestyles.”
There is always an emphasis on designing the workshops to be primarily skills-based, interactive and experiential. “It’s really about, how do you incorporate these skills into your life?
“With each one of our workshops, you will learn new skills that you are going to practice that week to see how they work for you. By the end, you will have four or five new skills and you’ll find those that really resonate with you; ones that work for you,” she said. “That’s what we find that really works for people.”
In a move to make the workshops even more accessible, Milkovich said many are available in both four and eight- week sessions.
“We are also starting up the workshops every month,” she said. This way, there are no lengthy waiting periods should someone miss out on signing up during a given week.
Another exciting new tool this year is the introduction of a downloadable publication called My Self-Care Journey.
“It’s a journal that is available on our web site. It was designed by several health care professionals as well as patients and other members of the community. The journal is about choosing healthy habits each day, and it helps you intentionally tune into your lifestyle choices – it provides a guide for making positive changes,” she said, adding that there are sections on mindfulness and gratitude as well. Ultimately, solid lifestyle changes typically come from making smaller, more manageable goals, said Milkovich.
“it’s more about those tiny little building blocks in your lifestyle that can make a difference. It’s also about people being kinder and gentler with themselves while building healthier lifestyles.”
“My Self-Care Journey is available to anyone – they can go online and print it off. For those who would prefer a hard copy, they can ask at their doctor’s office, or they can swing by the Primary Care Network. There is no charge.”
Looking ahead, the next Health Café is slated for March 14 and is entitled ‘Gout – Disease of the Kings’. Presented by PCN staff, folks are invited to learn more about this condition and ways to help manage it. Tune in live on the Red Deer Public Library Facebook page at 5:15 p.m. Milkovich said staff are always open to preparing Health Cafes on topics of interest to the public at large. “They can let us know – we’d be happy to hear from them,” she said. Several individual programs are available as well via the PCN, from help with diabetes, blood pressure and cholesterol to pharmacy queries to assistance with everything from quitting smoking to learning more about housing or financing. Milkovich also highlighted a relatively new program called the MINT Memory Clinic which is available with a referral from a family doctor. Folks are taken through a full assessment and provided with recommendations for ongoing care and connection with specialists.
As Milkovich pointed out, the PCN is also a hub for those seeking information about health and wellness resources in the community. Besides the workshops, health cafes and personal appointments, they can help point folks in the right direction for the best kind of assistance they may need.
“We want to help empower people to live the healthiest lives that they can,” she said, adding that it’s always so amazing to see people make terrific changes in their daily lives.
“We do get stories from people, and it is so inspiring to see the differences that have been made in their lives.”
For more about the PCN, check out reddeerpcn.com or find them on Facebook for all the latest news as well. You can also call the office at 403-343-9100.
Click here to read other stories from the Red Deer Primary Care Network.
Health
All 12 Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Studies Found the Same Thing: Unvaccinated Children Are Far Healthier
I joined Del Bigtree in studio on The HighWire to discuss what the data now make unavoidable: the CDC’s 81-dose hyper-vaccination schedule is driving the modern epidemics of chronic disease and autism.
This was not a philosophical debate or a clash of opinions. We walked through irrefutable, peer-reviewed evidence showing that whenever vaccinated and unvaccinated children are compared directly, the unvaccinated group is far healthier—every single time.
Reanalyzing the Largest Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Birth-Cohort Study Ever Conducted
At the center of our discussion was our peer-reviewed reanalysis of the Henry Ford Health System vaccinated vs. unvaccinated birth-cohort study (Lamerato et al.)—the largest and most rigorous comparison of its kind ever conducted.
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The original authors relied heavily on Cox proportional hazards models, a time-adjusted approach that can soften absolute disease burden. Even so, nearly all chronic disease outcomes were higher in vaccinated children.
Our reanalysis used direct proportional comparisons, stripping away the smoothing and revealing the full magnitude of the signal.
- All 22 chronic disease categories favored the unvaccinated cohort when proportional disease burden was examined
- Cancer incidence was 54% higher in vaccinated children (0.0102 vs. 0.0066)
- When autism-associated conditions were grouped appropriately—including autism, ADHD, developmental delay, learning disability, speech disorder, neurologic impairment, seizures, and related diagnoses—the vaccinated cohort showed a 549% higher odds of autism-spectrum–associated clinical outcomes
The findings are internally consistent, biologically coherent, and concordant with every prior vaccinated vs. unvaccinated study, all of which show drastically poorer health outcomes among vaccinated children
The 12 Vaccinated vs. Unvaccinated Studies Regulators Ignore
In the McCullough Foundation Autism Report, we compiled all 12 vaccinated vs. unvaccinated pediatric studies currently available. These studies span different populations, countries, study designs, and data sources.
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Every single one reports the same overall pattern. Across all 12 studies, unvaccinated children consistently exhibit substantially lower rates of chronic disease, including:
- Autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders
- ADHD, tics, learning and speech disorders
- Asthma, allergies, eczema, and autoimmune conditions
- Chronic ear infections, skin disorders, and gastrointestinal illness
This level of consistency across independent datasets is precisely what epidemiology looks for when assessing causality. It also explains why no federal agency has ever conducted—or endorsed—a fully vaccinated vs. fully unvaccinated safety study.
Flu Shot Failure
We also addressed the persistent failure of seasonal influenza vaccination.
A large Cleveland Clinic cohort study of 53,402 employees followed participants during the 2024–2025 respiratory viral season and found:
- 82.1% of employees were vaccinated against influenza
- Vaccinated individuals had a 27% higher adjusted risk of influenza compared with the unvaccinated state (HR 1.27; 95% CI 1.07–1.51; p = 0.007)
- This corresponded to a negative vaccine effectiveness of −26.9% (95% CI −55.0 to −6.6%), meaning vaccination was associated with increased—not reduced—risk of influenza
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When vaccination exposure increases, chronic disease, neurodevelopmental disorders, and inflammatory illness increase with it. When children are unvaccinated, they are measurably healthier across virtually every outcome that matters.
The science needed to confront the chronic disease and autism epidemics already exists. What remains is the willingness to acknowledge it.
Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation
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From the Fraser Institute
By Nadeem Esmail and Mackenzie Moir
It’s an exciting time in Canadian health-care policy. But even the slew of new reforms in Alberta only go part of the way to using all the policy tools employed by high performing universal health-care systems.
For 2026, for the sake of Canadian patients, let’s hope Alberta stays the path on changes to how hospitals are paid and allowing some private purchases of health care, and that other provinces start to catch up.
While Alberta’s new reforms were welcome news this year, it’s clear Canada’s health-care system continued to struggle. Canadians were reminded by our annual comparison of health care systems that they pay for one of the developed world’s most expensive universal health-care systems, yet have some of the fewest physicians and hospital beds, while waiting in some of the longest queues.
And speaking of queues, wait times across Canada for non-emergency care reached the second-highest level ever measured at 28.6 weeks from general practitioner referral to actual treatment. That’s more than triple the wait of the early 1990s despite decades of government promises and spending commitments. Other work found that at least 23,746 patients died while waiting for care, and nearly 1.3 million Canadians left our overcrowded emergency rooms without being treated.
At least one province has shown a genuine willingness to do something about these problems.
The Smith government in Alberta announced early in the year that it would move towards paying hospitals per-patient treated as opposed to a fixed annual budget, a policy approach that Quebec has been working on for years. Albertans will also soon be able purchase, at least in a limited way, some diagnostic and surgical services for themselves, which is again already possible in Quebec. Alberta has also gone a step further by allowing physicians to work in both public and private settings.
While controversial in Canada, these approaches simply mirror what is being done in all of the developed world’s top-performing universal health-care systems. Australia, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland all pay their hospitals per patient treated, and allow patients the opportunity to purchase care privately if they wish. They all also have better and faster universally accessible health care than Canada’s provinces provide, while spending a little more (Switzerland) or less (Australia, Germany, the Netherlands) than we do.
While these reforms are clearly a step in the right direction, there’s more to be done.
Even if we include Alberta’s reforms, these countries still do some very important things differently.
Critically, all of these countries expect patients to pay a small amount for their universally accessible services. The reasoning is straightforward: we all spend our own money more carefully than we spend someone else’s, and patients will make more informed decisions about when and where it’s best to access the health-care system when they have to pay a little out of pocket.
The evidence around this policy is clear—with appropriate safeguards to protect the very ill and exemptions for lower-income and other vulnerable populations, the demand for outpatient healthcare services falls, reducing delays and freeing up resources for others.
Charging patients even small amounts for care would of course violate the Canada Health Act, but it would also emulate the approach of 100 per cent of the developed world’s top-performing health-care systems. In this case, violating outdated federal policy means better universal health care for Canadians.
These top-performing countries also see the private sector and innovative entrepreneurs as partners in delivering universal health care. A relationship that is far different from the limited individual contracts some provinces have with private clinics and surgical centres to provide care in Canada. In these other countries, even full-service hospitals are operated by private providers. Importantly, partnering with innovative private providers, even hospitals, to deliver universal health care does not violate the Canada Health Act.
So, while Alberta has made strides this past year moving towards the well-established higher performance policy approach followed elsewhere, the Smith government remains at least a couple steps short of truly adopting a more Australian or European approach for health care. And other provinces have yet to even get to where Alberta will soon be.
Let’s hope in 2026 that Alberta keeps moving towards a truly world class universal health-care experience for patients, and that the other provinces catch up.
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