A group of Thompson dietitians started Nutrition Month off by placing second in video contest organized by the Manitoba Association of Health Care Professionals (MAHCP).
Union president Bob Moroz dropped by the Northern Regional Health Authority (NRHA) administration building March 5 to congratulate these women in person and present them with a cheque for $1,000.
Even though Moroz admitted that the MAHCP didn’t wield any decision-making power in this contest, since the winning videos were determined by overall Facebook likes, he was still thoroughly impressed by all the information and personality these dietitians managed to squeeze into a video that’s just under three minutes in length.
“They’ve made me laugh every time I watched that video through,” he said. “They also did such an excellent job of telling the world what it is they do and what it is they don’t do and dispelling some of the myths about their profession.”
Public health dietitian Melissa Pham said they also wanted to use this video to highlight the amount of travel they have to undertake to nearby communities on a regular basis, which is remarkably different from their colleagues in the south.
Moroz later explained that the MAHCP originally conceived of this new contest to give various health care professions in Manitoba the opportunity to showcase why their work is important.
“We are often overlooked both in media and in government, to be quite honest, as to the value of health care professionals,” he said “We do things that people don’t often think about across the board, with 160 different professions, so it’s really, really awesome to see that kind of exposure for us and our members.”
As for the prize money itself, Pham said they are planning to put it right back into the local community by donating food to the Salvation Army and the Thompson Homeless Shelter.
“What we’re gearing towards is making meal bags that … have all the ingredients for a meal for a family, and packaging them all up and then bringing them to the Salvation Army,” she said. “The other part is that we will be talking with the homeless shelter to see what types of food they don’t have money for in their budget.”
Pham thanked the NRHA and the community at large for helping them nab second place in the contest, since a local groundswell of support translated into over 600 likes on Facebook.
The MAHCP received 14 different submissions for this video contest, with the top prize of $1,500 going to a group of medical lab technologists from Winnipeg who garnered 721 Facebook likes in total.
