By Jennifer Mains
Published March 2001
Sometimes St. John’s Kitchen feels like an island stranded in the middle of downtown Kitchener. Despite the numerous agencies that work in the downtown area, these agencies generally don’t share many of their resources or skills.
On a warm summer day last year, Doug Rankin, the outreach worker for the Kitchener Downtown Community Health Centre breezed into the Kitchen with a proposal. The Health Centre wondered if it were feasible to set up a walk in clinic, once a week, in the same building as the Kitchen. The hope was that it would provide greater access to continued medical care for anyone living in the downtown who had no family physician.
The shortage of family physicians in this area has driven many of us, including myself, to use hospital emergency rooms and urgent care clinics when illness occurs. For many in our community there is little opportunity to participate in preventive medical care or to develop a longer term relationship with a medical caregiver. The proposal from the Community Health Centre was a gift.
Last November the clinic was opened. The Church of St. John the Evangelist provided rooms just below the Kitchen and the clinic is now operating every Tuesday from 10 am to 1 pm. An outreach worker, nurse practitioner and a physician receive whomever has a concern. The medical condition is accessed and a history taken. If the person has no family physician she or he then has the opportunity to connect with the Kitchener Downtown Health Centre and the broader services it offers.
The people and the services of the Health Centre have become an important system for those of us at the Kitchen. We deeply appreciate and applaud their effort to model a larger vision of what community means in the downtown area.
