Canada, Ottawa: Community Health Centres and Primary Health Care

Community Health Centres, Primary Health Care and Ottawa Centre

Recently CBC Radio carried an item about new clinics in Alberta: private clinics at which one can enroll, and receive what essentially good primary health care. Nutrition counseling, health promotion programs, someone on call, etc...

Oddly the services provided by these private health centres are equivalent to what community health centres across Canada have been providing for a number of years. But provincial governments have not been friendly to community health centres, and have consistently starved them for funding.

A strong primary health care system can provide the solution to serious issues such as
wait times, but it is all too deeply mired in entrenched systems, narrow-minded thinking, turf battles and structural barriers to change. It is, quite simply, stuck.

The city of Ottawa has some seven community health centres, two in the centre of Ottawa. Both Centretown and Somerset West Community Health Centre have served the area for over 20 years. Both have community programming that is tailored to the needs of central urban communities; both provide the kind of preventive care that keeps people away from hospitals;  both have walk-in clinics providing care that keeps people away form emergency rooms; and both rely on teams of health providers, from nurse practitioners to physicians to social workers and community development workers.

So we have two models: one which provides great primary health care to those who can afford it, the other struggling to provide primary health care to geographically defined  populations, unable to grow because funding is unavailable.

In 1978 the Alma Ata declaration called for universal access, for equity and community participation. In Canada we appear to have achieved some form of almost universal access: but we lag far behind where we could be in terms of equity, or even building towards equity. We have barely touched the whole question of appropriate use of resources.  

From October 26th to 29th, Ottawa is hosting an international conference on these issues: a conference entitled Health for all or Health for Some?  The conference is commemorating that important 30th anniversary of Alma Ata, and is involving a number of centretown residents who have been long associated with primary health care in Canada.

An international conference such as this, emphasizes the connections amongst primary health care initiatives around the world: this small world of ours is seeking to improve primary health care, and Ottawa, at a deep community level has a great deal to offer.

Jack McCarthy, director of Somerset West Community Health Centre, will be speaking at the pre-conference continuing education day. Maija Kagis, a long time Community health centre board member, is co-chairing the conference. A number of people associated over the years with primary health care in Ottawa and in Canada will be in attendance.

Want to join them? www.csih.org