Ministry of Health

Provides information to help individuals make end-of-life, emergency, and critical health care decisions. Enables a capable adult to make plans in advance of a time when they may be incapable of making health care decisions for themselves.

Offers an Advance Care Planning Guide, available for download or ordering, as well as online resources, videos and brochures. The planning guide is available in multiple languages; see website.

Offers online information and resources to help parents and caregivers have conversations about alcohol with their children and teens to help guide them towards healthy decisions when it comes to alcohol.

Provides easy to understand, practical, evidence-based information to help new parents from pregnancy, through birth, and in the parenting of a baby up to six months of age.

Provides provincial air quality advisories, resources, management, and reporting to help improve air quality and reduce negative health impacts.

Supports individuals of any age who have reached the end stage of a life-threatening disease or illness and who wish to receive palliative care at home, or wherever the person is living, including with family or friends, in a supportive or assisted living residence, or in a hospice unit at a residential care facility.

Eligible patients receive coverage of eligible costs for medications used in palliative care through the PharmaCare BC Palliative Care Drug Plan, and medical supplies and equipment through the local health authority.

Provides useful information to assist in obtaining, replacing, and updating a BC Services Card. The BC Services Card can be used to access health services, as well as to identify oneself anywhere that currently accepts government-issued ID.

Helps eligible BC residents stop smoking or using other tobacco products, by covering the cost of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products or some of the cost of specific smoking cessation prescription drugs.

Prescription smoking cessation drugs are covered as benefits under PharmaCare. Non-prescription nicotine replacement therapy products are provided at no cost.

Provides a passport-sized booklet for parents to use to record important health information about their child, including height and weight, illnesses, accidents, allergies, hospitalizations, and immunizations. Also provides safety tips and a space to record findings for hearing, dental and vision checks.

Provides COVID-19 vaccine information including vaccine registration and bookings, immunization records, testing and treatments, and guidance for wearing a mask, travel and businesses.

COVID-19 and influenza vaccines are free and available at pharmacies, health authority clinics and some primary care providers' offices.

Provides guidance to individuals at the end of their lives, families, and health care providers on how to have an expected or planned natural home death. See the website for forms and information, how to arrange for care, and expected or planned home death questions and answers.