The inaugural Shoppe Talk with Geoff will take place in the reading room of the Meadow Lake Library on January 18. (Submitted by/Meadow Lake Library)

By Julia Lovett-Squires

Shoppe Talk

Talk health in new ‘Shoppe’ series at Meadow Lake Library

Jan 4, 2024 | 2:00 PM

Health care can be a minefield to navigate, and it often leads to new questions. A new lecture series at the Meadow Lake Library is aiming to change that with ‘Shoppe Talk with Geoff.’

“We hope to do at least one a month going forward and just to hit on a few, you know a few pretty common health-related topics,” said Medicine Shoppe Pharmacist Geoff Barton.

“Kind of give the public an opportunity to ask some questions and have a bit of a general discussion.”

The pharmacist and pharmacy owner said the idea came to him after he attended a conference and had heard about other pharmacists doing similar talks with much success. The first topic will be mental health and will take place at 7 p.m. on Jan. 18 and all are welcome to drop in.

“Now, that’s a pretty – pretty big topic – lots of conditions that can fall under that but we’re going to start with that,” he said.

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Library Programming Clerk Tawn Marshall said she was delighted when Barton came to her with the idea.

“We have some incredibly skilled and knowledgeable people in our community and people are doing some incredible things to contribute to their surroundings,” she said.

“We have a lot of people interested in trying things out or curious about something, but they’ve never had a reason to necessarily seek it out themselves.”

She explained that anyone can go to their pharmacists for conversations, but the talks are geared towards creating a community dialogue.

“These are an opportunity to create a setting for a discussion and people who might not have come up with questions on their own or had the time to make an appointment,” she said.

While this first talk will focus on anxiety and depression, Barton said he’s already got ideas for future sessions.

“We’ll probably touch on diabetes, wouldn’t mind doing a talk on just sort of navigating drug plans, I mean the sky’s the limit as far as different things that we can get into,” he said.

They also plan to get public feedback to see what kind of topics would be of interest and Marshall explained that for speaking engagements, the library sets up the seating in a way that will be conducive to lively conversation.

“We often find in a small town like this when people attend, odds are that they have the same questions as other people and they might even know other people in the audience,” she said.

“We really like to encourage back and forth and discussion not just between the audience and the presenter but even between audience members.”

To help prepare, Barton said he’s been studying up on the topics and paying attention to trends appearing in his pharmacy.

“That was the big thing is just really seeing what kind of questions I’m getting asked on a daily basis,” he said, noting that was the impetus to moving forward.

“That’s what we wanted to do too is to not – not go in there with a pre-canned lecture – that’s pretty easy to do,” he said of the talk’s direction.

“Do some myth-busting to a certain extent too.”

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julia.lovettsquires@pattisonmedia.com

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