Seven Oaks General Hospital Foundation
The Seven Oaks General Hospital Foundation was established in 1975 to advocate for the development of a hospital in northwest Winnipeg. The community wanted a general hospital, but it also had a vision for medical research, innovation, and illness prevention. Seven Oaks General Hospital admitted its first patient in 1981.
Initially, SOGH Foundation engaged in fundraising for hospital equipment, programs, and research; it has since expanded its influence to support an entire campus dedicated to innovative research, chronic disease prevention, care, treatment, and rehabilitation.
Seven Oaks General Hospital Foundation is a not-for-profit charitable organization dedicated to working for and with our community. Funds raised by the Foundation support the patients, programs, research, facilities, and services at Seven Oaks General Hospital, the Wellness Institute, and, the Chronic Disease Innovation Centre (CDIC).
Seven Oaks General Hospital, the Wellness Institute, and the CDIC are pioneers in innovative wellness initiatives, research, and patient care. Leading-edge chronic disease management and prevention services drastically improve the quality of patient care, while decreasing the length and frequency of hospitalization in our community through initiatives for greater community health.
Your donation to the Foundation directly improves the lives of our patients and members of our community. From life-saving medical equipment to the advanced management and prevention of chronic disease, support for the Foundation means the medical resources and programs you need are here when you need them most.
The Seven Oaks General Hospital Health Campus Story
Welcome to the Seven Oaks General Hospital health campus.
We are proud to be Canada’s first integrated healthcare hub, dedicated to research, preventative lifestyle medicine, and the treatment and management of chronic disease. We are changing lives with the way we deliver healthcare, and the world is paying attention.
Seven Oaks provides most general hospital services and is a major provider of Urgent Care services, endoscopy and diagnostic imaging. It is also a global leader in kidney health services. It offers geriatric rehabilitation services, a geriatric day hospital, and has a large commitment to the training of medical residents who deliver care to patients in the hospital and to outpatients in an interprofessional community clinic under the supervision of University of Manitoba medical faculty.
The concept of preventative healthcare has always been essential to Seven Oaks A fitness centre for the community later named the Joseph Zuken Fitness Centre was built on the lower level of the hospital in 1983, where staff began to integrate fitness with healthcare including rehabilitation programming. In 1993, a feasibility study was conducted to assess whether a more comprehensive medical fitness centre — devoted to improving the health of the community — could become a reality. Medical fitness refers to services that integrate medical oversight with fitness and lifestyle change programming to address individual health risk factors including disease management, therapy and rehabilitation.
As a result of much passion and perseverance, the Wellness Institute was conceived in 1996. It is a state-of-the-art 80,000-square-foot facility that delivers medically informed exercise, diet, and other lifestyle medicine for people of all health and fitness levels to improve their overall wellness.
It quickly became a wellness-oriented gathering place that changed the way staff and local community think about healthcare —moving from a reactive to a proactive approach. Wellness was the first Certified Medical Fitness Facility of its kind attached to a hospital in Canada which provided a unique opportunity to integrate with the hospital’s clinical programming. The Wellness Institute has become central to the continuum of care offered at the hospital and provides lifestyle medicine services for health promotion, illness prevention, and wellness restoration.
In 2005, the Wellness Institute was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award by the Medical Fitness Association. As a global leader in lifestyle medicine which has garnered international attention and praise, and the Wellness Institute isa model for other medical facilities internationally, for preventing illness, improving quality of life and enhancing health outcomes for clients who have developed a chronic condition.
Wellness Institute helps many hospital patients with rehabilitation and recovery after discharge, but it also works closely with the Chronic Disease Innovation Centre (CDIC) to ensure its programs are evidence-based and effective. CDIC takes healthcare delivery to the next level by informing both preventative programming and clinical practice across the campus.
CDIC was established in 2015 to prioritize innovation in patient health outcomes. In 2017, a new, modern space dedicated to CDIC was built, thanks in part to a concerted capital campaign by the SOGH Foundation. Led by a diverse, internationally-renowned team of nephrologists, biostatisticians, nutritionists, researchers, data analysts and others, CDIC uses a unique combination of clinical expertise and a statistical methodological approach to research. It conducts clinical trials on new drugs, technology,, nutrition and exercise interventions, along with innovative service delivery, and system improvements. This critical work has a significant impact on a local, national and international level.
Specialists working at CDIC developed the Kidney Failure Risk Equation — a formula that can accurately predict the risk of kidney failure for patients newly diagnosed with chronic kidney disease. Application of the equation helps clinicians to target interventions for patients with higher risk and provide preventive advice and reassurance to patients with lower risk of kidney failure. This has led to more efficient use of specialist resources, better planning for dialysis starts and better outcomes.
This research breakthrough has inspired CDIC to expand its research into other common chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. CDIC often collaborates with other university-affiliated research centres across Canada and sometimes internationally including the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic.
CDIC researchers have unique access to evaluation opportunities at the Wellness Institute, and the results of their research expand the evidence base for how lifestyle medicine and other innovative approaches can contribute to chronic disease prevention and management. By integrating research from CDIC, the lifestyle medicine expertise at the Wellness Institute, and the high quality of care provided at the Seven Oaks General Hospital, the Seven Oaks campus has become the model for health and well-being and chronic disease research globally.
It is inspiring what can happen when research, prevention and treatment are all focused on the patient’s outcome. From our very beginnings, innovation and community care have been at the forefront. These priorities are the fuel that has and will continue to propel us to make the campus at Seven Oaks General Hospital a hub for creating a thriving, healthy community, both here and around the world.