Health centre for urban Indigenous people in Halifax begins accepting patients

Wije'winen Health Centre, an initiative of the Mi'kmaw Native Friendship Centre in Halifax, started accepting patients on Friday.

The health centre was launched to address the growing needs of the urban Indigenous population with culturally appropriate care.

Dr. Brent Young is an Anishinaabe family doctor, academic director of Indigenous health for the Dalhousie faculty of medicine and is the clinical lead for the Urban Indigenous Wellness Initiative with the Mi'kmaw Native Friendship Centre.

The clinic will fill a gap in Halifax in providing community-based and centred care, Young told CBC Radio's Information Morning Halifax on Friday.

Young spoke with Information Morning host Portia Clark about the importance of the clinic to the community.

This is a condensed version of their conversation that has been edited for clarity and length.

What are the benefits that you anticipate from this approach?

We know that Indigenous patients who are interacting with the health-care system oftentimes face racism and discrimination.

Being able to provide care that is culturally appropriate and culturally safe in a primary care setting will hopefully keep patients from trying to access care or needing to access care in more acute settings, whether that's the emergency department or other hospital settings, which often tend to be more expensive and costly for the health-care system as well.

Is this a first for Nova Scotia, having this health clinic at the Mi'kmaw Native Friendship Centre?

Yes, it's something the friendship centre has been working toward for many years now, but I've been on board, I guess, for the last year and a half, trying to work toward that.

It's something that we've probably never seen in a primary care landscape where we have so many services.

I think there are up to 50 [services] now at the Mi'kmaw Native Friendship Centre that we'll be able to refer patients to the kind of wraparound support that we've never seen before. 

I suppose consistency and trust will be a big part of the foundation of this clinic to get people to come there and put their health in your hands. Is this going to be a long-standing program there? 

Yeah, that's the hope.

We received some funding from the National Association of Friendship Centres to get this off the ground, so that will hold us over for one year.

But we're really going to need to find other sources of funding moving forward, and we're hopeful we'll be able to do so.

The intent is to be providing that continuity of care and comprehensive primary care for folks. We'll be taking on 800 to 1,000 patients that we'll be able to see over the first year, hopefully.

Do you think that there will be that kind of demand, that number of patients who will seek care there? 

We anticipate that and maybe even more than that, and we have plans for growth to accommodate that.

But the Mi'kmaw Friendship Centre currently services about 7,000 urban Indigenous folks in Halifax at present.

We expect based on the number of people on the family practice registry in the general population, that we would certainly see at least that much demand. 

Does it open up opportunities for medical students, people who might be in nursing or on their path to becoming a doctor, to practise in a different kind of setting or to do their residency in different kinds of ways?

I think that's another great aspect of this — that we are kind of affiliated with the Dalhousie department of family medicine, and all the physicians who work in the clinics will be academic physicians under that department and with that will have teaching responsibilities.

We'll be able to take students on a regular basis to rotate through the clinic.

It'll be something that's at least in the central [health] zone here that we've not had the opportunity to give students that type of learning experience with Indigenous populations. But I think it'll be fantastic. 

And for the patients who are coming in to the friendship centre and the clinic. What will the signs of success be for you that this approach is making a difference to people?

There are a number of ways that I think it will be a success ... seeing that first patient come through the door, knowing how big of a project this is.

But I think really seeing the community come together and be able to access the service on a regular basis and start building relationships and more connections within the friendship centre will be a huge indicator as well.

And to become a patient, I gather you have to apply. What are the criteria?

You have to be an urban Indigenous person who is living within the HRM.

Our website has a list of documentation that will provide some support for that.

Our staff will be able to kind of walk you through that process if you call the clinic.

That is our target population for the clinic and that's been very important from the get-go, is that it is for the urban Indigenous population. 

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