Innovation

EASTND is a modern wellness space to help women feel vibrant, healthy, and beautiful from the inside out. By integrating a variety of services that optimize women’s hormonal, skin, digestive and mental health. Their clinics offer an innovative approach to therapy by first developing a solution outside of the medical system and potentially collaborating with medical professionals to find their clients a solution to their problems. By offering an integrative solution before the problem exists, more people are being educated on their health and well-being instead of regularly relying on reactionary medicine.

While supporting the idea of being an innovative business, EASTND fosters the United Nation’s goal of promoting sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, with full and productive employment and decent work for all. The staff maintain a physical presence in the community by contributing to volunteer programs and are committed to providing more jobs to people in the community looking to provide a more sustainable approach to medicine. As well, fostering a work environment that is inclusive for all individuals to accomplish their goals while growing the local economy in the communities they impact.

Inspiration

In most cities across Canada, you are likely able to find at least one alternative medicine practitioner. Before EASTND the Atlantic Provinces were missing two integral aspects to clinics in this field: Modernization & Integration.

Jodie had always dreamed of pursuing naturopathic medicine, but after completing her degree in Toronto and working in naturopathic oncology for a short stint, she realized her goals consisted of much more than just being a typical ND. While living in Toronto and visiting other bustling cities like Vancouver and Calgary, she found inspiration in clinics providing a more modern and integrative approach to naturopathic medicine, by creating aesthetic, new wave environments for patients to get treatment. Seeing the value in connecting patients to various holistic practitioners, offering preventive solutions to current symptoms, and bringing a new mindset to the Maritimes idea of alternative medicine, EASTND was born.

Along with creating a modern and integrative clinic where patients could be referred from one practitioner to another within the same building, Jodie’s mission and purpose behind creating EASTND were to empower and educate her community—working primarily with people who feel as though they have not seen progress or lessening their healthcare concerns by using traditional medicine. EASTND aims to educate their clients and community on what symptoms mean, why they may have begun, and how to lessen them while also providing a sense of empowerment by imparting them with this knowledge and connecting them to a community of continuing support.

“We are really trying to help people understand. If you get a diagnosis what does that mean? What does that look like? Provide that education…and allowing clients to feel empowered because, what happens, is they end up in our system with our doctors, and sometimes end up frustrated because they go years doing something and not getting the results they are looking for, or just feeling like they don’t have any say or power in their health. And I would argue that we do.” – Dr. Jodie Tatlock

Overall impact

During our meeting with Jodie, we were enlightened to hear about the many ways EASTND was helping the community, and striving for a sustainable future. We quickly realized the impact that the EASTND clinics have on not only their direct clients, but society as a whole. The preventative health care approach EASTND offers, helps free up the typical health care system, while offering new and unconventional avenues of health management to those who may need a different approach. This innovation in the healthcare system directly benefits the health and wellness of the community. Not only does EASTND promote health and wellbeing in the community, they also educate and aid clients in better managing and understanding their health and body, even after all of the typical options have been exhausted.

The impact EASTND has had as a business goes beyond the services they provide. EASTND is committed to giving back, and continues to grow and develop new strategies to help more people. When interviewing Jodie, she elaborated on an experience she had in her clinics. Jodie reflected on a client who came to EASTND with fertility issues that were not resolved with traditional forms of medicine. Although the client had been told she was unable to have a baby, within 6 months of working with Jodie and her team, the couple was pregnant. Not only did the innovation created at EASTND, change a client's life, it also gave hope to any other women in the same scenario. The impact this has on an individual's life is unmeasurable, but without a doubt is a positive step towards a brighter future.

Business benefit

EASTND provides short and long-term benefits to their clientele in a modernized approach that the Atlantic Provinces have never seen before. From the short-term perspective, clients have immediate access to the support they require instead of being forced onto an extensive waiting list where answers to their problems are never definite. In the long run, preventative health care lessens the economic burden on local medical systems such as emergent care centres or family doctors by providing solutions to existing problems. As well, integrating alternative health care measures such as counselling or dieticians into the New Brunswick and P.E.I medical community offers a modern approach to medicine that the Atlantic provinces haven’t seen before.

The community and societal implications EASTND fosters throughout the cyclical year have seen tremendous effects on the less fortunate in the communities they affect. The team has set a goal to make charitable donations every quarter to people who have had an impact on their community. The foundations EASTND chooses surround the idea of bettering individuals psychological, physiological, or behavioural health and well-being. For example: last quarter the team donated to a foundation that creates care boxes for women who experience infant loss in the Moncton Hospital. Their contribution allowed the foundation to create more care boxes as well as improve the mental health of the women who lost their child.

Social and environmental benefit

EASTND is creating a unique environment and making a significant impact on reducing inequalities, working towards gender equality, providing education, and building a sustainable health and well-being base.

Reducing Inequalities & Gender Equality

One of EASTND's most sought out services is aid with fertility issues and conceiving. Needing aid with fertility and conception is a cis-female problem and a problem for people all along the gender spectrum. By breaking the barriers of education and empowerment for all those seeking help, EASTND is taking leaps and bounds towards reducing inequalities and working towards gender equality.

Education

Being one of their primary focuses, working with clients to help educate them on their diagnoses or un-diagnosed issues they are facing is likely to make an enormous amount of difference for education on health and creating a more informed community. With a better understanding of their health, people can make informed decisions on medical options and all around have a better sense of knowledge.

Health and Well-Being

One of the most significant benefits EASTND provides is that by increasing society's education on their well-being, the pressure on our doctors and hospitals is likely to decrease significantly, providing us with a more sustainable and preventative approach to maintain health. Additionally, naturopathy focuses more on long-term care rather than just temporary solutions; this is a more sustainable health care option and could help increase the independence and well-being of many people.

Interview

Dr. Jodie Tatlock, Naturopathic Doctor and Founder