Choosing a Date for 2027

Good evening,

I apologize for the late email.

I hope everyone has been enjoying the summer and has had some well-deserved time to relax.

I wanted to share an update on some work I have been doing behind the scenes over the past few weeks for Healthcare Horizons. I have now set up a Microsoft 365 Business account specifically for Healthcare Horizons, including our new account, HealthcareHorizons@HealthcareHorizonsCK.onmicrosoft.com, and have spent quite a bit of time developing both a student-facing Healthcare Horizons site https://healthcarehorizonsck.sharepoint.com/ and a private Community Partner Hub in SharePoint https://healthcarehorizonsck.sharepoint.com/sites/HealthcareHorizons. The general email that will be associated with Healthcare Horizons moving forward will be healthcarehorizonsck@outlook.com.

Many hours have gone into building this over the last three weeks, with the goal of creating a central location that will hopefully make Healthcare Horizons easier to navigate for both students and all of us involved in planning. After the positive response and lasting impact of our inaugural event, I wanted students to have somewhere they could return to afterward rather than having all of the information disappear once the event was over. The student site will provide one central location where they can explore healthcare careers, programs, community partners, event information, resources, photos, and other information that may help them continue exploring healthcare opportunities locally.

I have also created a separate Community Partner Hub, which is private and only accessible to those of us involved with Healthcare Horizons. This will give us one central place to share planning information, documents, meeting information, resources, updates, and responsibilities rather than having information spread across multiple emails and platforms.

I will fully admit that I am new to SharePoint, so this has definitely been a learning experience! I have spent a lot of time trying to make sure everything is organized, functional, and easy to use, but I am sure there will still be things we can improve. Fannie, Mallory, and Beth, I know you have much more SharePoint experience than I do, so I would absolutely welcome your expertise and suggestions as we start using it.

For the student-facing site, everyone will be able to review the overall site; however, editing access will be more limited. Under Community Partners, there is a drop-down menu with an individual page for each participating organization. I have created a basic starting page for each partner, but these are meant to become your space to share whatever information you feel would be valuable for students, programs, careers, opportunities, videos, links, resources, or anything else you feel would help students learn more about your organization.

Partners will have editing access to their own page. Once changes are made, they will be submitted for approval before being published. I set it up this way simply to help prevent something from accidentally being changed or removed on the student-facing site without anyone realizing it. The approval will come to me, and once reviewed, the updated version will be published. If SharePoint is not something you are comfortable working with, please do not worry, you can always send your information to me and I am more than happy to add or update it for you.

A quick note regarding the invitations: some of you may have already received Microsoft invitations for access, while others may still be waiting. While I was in the process of assigning everyone their individual permissions this evening, Microsoft flagged the number of external permissions/invitations I was sending as suspicious activity and temporarily blocked further guest invitations. I spent quite a bit of time with Microsoft Support tonight, and they have confirmed that the issue is on their end and needs to be reviewed before the restriction can be removed. Unfortunately, it likely will not be resolved until at least tomorrow. Once Microsoft clears the restriction, I will finish sending access to everyone. If you have already received your invitation and are able to access the site, that is perfect! 😊

For those who have not received access yet, you will receive Microsoft invitation emails separately. Please make sure you accept the invitation using the same organizational email address that was invited. Once everyone is connected as a guest/member, I will also be able to assign planning items directly to individuals.

Once everyone has had an opportunity to review the student site and we are comfortable with it, we can begin distributing it to students. The goal is for students to simply sign in using their school email address and have access to one central Healthcare Horizons resource.

One feature I am particularly excited about in the Community Partner Hub is the 2026-2027 Healthcare Horizons Planning Tracker. I have started building our upcoming planning items into it. When an action item is assigned to you, the system will automatically send you an email identifying the item, priority, status, and eventually the due date. I have also developed an automated reminder that will send another email three days before an outstanding item is due. I have intentionally not added many due dates yet, as I want those to come from our discussions rather than creating arbitrary deadlines at this time.

I know everyone involved with Healthcare Horizons has their own very busy roles outside of this initiative, so my goal with all of this is actually to make the planning process simpler, not more complicated. Hopefully, having one shared location, automatic notifications, and clear responsibilities will help keep everyone informed without having to search through long email chains.

I would also like to continue using WhatsApp. I found it very helpful last year for quick communication, particularly during event planning and on the event day itself, so I think it would be worthwhile to continue that alongside SharePoint. I am also in the process of setting up a Healthcare Horizons Teams channel through this business license that we can use for meetings and ongoing collaboration.

Finally, we do need to get our first planning meeting scheduled. I am cognizant of everyone's time, but I would like to aim for a meeting sometime in September so we can begin moving things forward. Unfortunately, the website that I sent in July did not work well for everybody. To make it easy for all. I will send a separate email after this and please hit reply all for dates and times that work best for you. Through this, we will coordinate with the largest amount of participates for a specific meeting date/time. Our biggest first decision will be establishing the 2026-2027 Healthcare Horizons event date. I know CKHA will be going through Accreditation toward the end of October, so November may be more realistic for the event. I will be out of the country until November 6, so if we are considering November, my preference would be for a date after November 6. Some dates I currently have open for consideration are November 16, 17, 23, 24, or 30 that do not interfere with school or teaching.

Please take some time once you receive your invitations to explore both sites. I genuinely welcome any feedback, ideas, things that are missing, or areas that could be improved. Healthcare Horizons has always been a collaborative initiative, and I want these sites to reflect that as well.

Thank you again for your continued involvement and support. I am looking forward to building on what we accomplished last year and making the next Healthcare Horizons even stronger.

Have a great evening, everyone!

Kindest regards,

Brandon Boundy, RN, RPN, BScN