Service providers gather to improve healthcare access for Indigenous Peoples
LETHBRIDGE — Alberta Health Services (AHS) and its partner agencies will hold a pop-up clinic on Sept. 23 to bring several programs and services directly to the city’s urban Indigenous population.
Multiple service providers will be at Galt Gardens from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. to help traditionally underserved urban Indigenous Peoples access healthcare that meets their needs.
Participants/services will include:
- Family Centre
- Boys and Girls Club
- Home Base and Community Links
- Lethbridge Legal Aid
- Lethbridge Public Library
- Lethbridge Family Services
- Alpha House, education and referrals
- Opokaa’sin Early Intervention Association
- Sik-Oo-Kotoki Friendship Society
- Building Better Brains
- Chinook Sexual Assault Centre
- Blood Tribe Dept. of Health - Kainai Diabetes Team, Community Health Services
- Aakom Kiyii Health (Piikani) Nutrition Services
- Primary care physicians from Blood Tribe Health and AHS South Zone, providing on-site walk-in doctor’s appointments.
- AHS Indigenous Health
- AHS Addiction and Mental Health, Education and Referrals (addition counselling, opioid agonist therapy, etc)
- AHS Population Health Promotion, Tobacco Reduction and Injury Prevention education
- Sexually transmitted/blood-borne infections (STBBI) education and referrals
- AHS oral health education and referrals
- AHS public health nursing
- Better Beginnings prenatal program
- Vaccine referrals
- AHS Alberta Healthy Living Program chronic pain education and referrals
- AHS nurse practitioner liver screening onsite
- AHS Home Care
- On-site lab services (as ordered by physician or nurse practitioner)
- AHS kidney check program health screening
- AHS palliative care – Lethbridge and southwest Alberta, education and referrals
- The Man Van, Alberta cancer screening
- Optometrist, eye exams
- Jordan’s Principle (Govt. of Canada, First Nations child advocacy) education and referrals
A powwow will take place at the same time in the same location.
Pop-up clinics have been developed based on the findings of Innovative Models Promoting Access to Care Transformation (IMPACT), a research study that explored how to deliver care to people who otherwise have limited or no access to traditional healthcare.
AHS believes in the importance of understanding culture and ceremony as part of person-centered care. Offering culturally sensitive care in unique ways is also part of the calls to action in the findings from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Alberta Health Services is the provincial health authority responsible for planning and delivering health supports and services for more than four million adults and children living in Alberta. Its mission is to provide a patient-focused, quality health system that is accessible and sustainable for all Albertans.
