After more than four years working as the chief executive officer (CEO) for Canadian Mental Health Association's Simcoe County branch, Dr. Valerie Grdisa has decided to step down from her post.
She will take over the role of CEO for the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA).
Grdisa started with the CMHA, which provides a variety of programs and services from youth right through to seniors, in early March 2020.
She acknowledges it was a unique and interesting time to begin the gig, at the start of the pandemic. Grdisa began her career in infectious disease in the early 1990s, and also worked at SickKids.
"I pretty much implemented an emergency response based on best practices,” she said. “Obviously, getting to know everyone virtually was probably the biggest challenge, but that was the only way to communicate. I was hitting the ground running … and working collaboratively with everyone to make sure we didn’t have any disruption in services.”
Grdisa said the majority of her career has been dedicated to mental health and addiction system transformation, so the position at CMHA seemed like it would be a great fit.
“I started out in children’s mental health as a front-line nurse and then became a nurse practitioner. I have managed mental health and addiction programs here in Ontario. When the role came up … I thought I would give it a shot,” she said, when asked what initially drew her to the position.
Looking back on the past four years, Grdisa says she’s proud of the growth the organization has experienced over that time.
“We have new base funding of more than $9 million. We have been able to enhance our addiction services, our housing supplements. We have implemented new advanced programs like our crisis call diversion, collaborative model with the OPP,” she said.
“That’s probably the biggest impact, in my mind, is implementing new programs to respond to community needs or to enhance existing programs.”
One of the biggest challenges, she added, has been the frustration related to the lack of movement on the creation of a supervised consumption site (SCS) in Barrie.
“We did get approval from city council in 2021 to move forward with the SCS in downtown Barrie and unfortunately we have gone now three years without the provincial government not making a decision about operational funding even though we had the Health Canada federal exemption,” she said.
“I feel a little bit saddened for the people who use drugs in our community that we weren’t able to implement that evidence-based model of care.”
Despite that, her decision to move on was solely a personal one.
“This is the hardest career decision of my life. I have really felt welcomed by the community since Day 1,” she said. “I started as an RN and then (a nurse practitioner) and I worked in different nursing roles at all the different levels of the system all the way up to being a provincial chief nurse.
"This is an opportunity for me to elevate 50 per cent of the workforce at a federal level and to be able to fulfill CNA’s mandate. It was more of an opportunity presented," Grdisa added.
The CNA is the national voice for all regulated nurses.
“I can’t think of a better opportunity to unite the nursing voice across all types of nurses and try to continue to work towards ensuring our publicly funded health-care system continues to thrive … and work across all jurisdictions to meet the needs of Canadians,” Grdisa said.
“For me, that was such an incredible opportunity to lift up the voices of my colleagues … and ensure whatever federal policy decisions are being made for Canadians in terms of health-system transformation that CNA has a voice and place at all tables," she added.
Dr. Jennifer Fillingham, currently serving as director of service operations at the CMHA's Simcoe County branch, will be stepping into the interim CEO role beginning Aug. 6.
A search committee within the board of directors will oversee the process of finding a successor CEO for the local CMHA branch.
