THE WHY.
Although people who are homeless tend to have substantially higher rates of illness than the broader population, they often lack access to effective healthcare services.
Barriers preventing people who are homeless from accessing primary care can be both personal and practical and include competing needs and priorities, illness and poor health itself, physical access to health services, difficulty in contacting services, medication security, and the affordability of health care.
This breakdown of care often results in emergency departments being the entry point for people facing disadvantage into the healthcare system. We are committed to addressing all barriers to accessing healthcare professionals across disciplines, vaccinating against disease, improving medication adherence, and patient education and buy-in to promote collaborative care. We aim to prevent disease before people facing disadvantage are forced to present to hospital.
The VacSeen Project was established because we saw a need to breakdown the cost and accessibility barriers in helping vulnerable populations access flu vaccines, and now as an organisation we have expanded our offerings to cover more health issues, as well as provide an opportunity for non-judgemental conversations around health.
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THE WHAT.
We run GP-led pop-up outreach health clinics in places people feel most comfortable, homeless shelters, hostels, social housing and alongside partner organisations. We aim to take medicine outside of medical settings, removing costs and increasing accessibility. At these clinics, our doctors and volunteers chat to people about their health, provide education, and help deliver both flu and COVID vaccines. Currently, we are involved with clinics in Brisbane, Ipswich, Toowoomba, the Sunshine Coast, the Gold Coast, Bundaberg and Townsville.
We also run a number of other initiatives to increase access to healthcare and prevent hospitalisations of those that we interact with.
HOW WILL MY DONATION HELP?
We are entirely volunteer run, and are supported by corporate partners that cover our administrative costs; the entirety of your donation directly goes towards running clinics and helping increase our ability to provide health advice and vaccination services to people experiencing homelessness and other vulnerable groups.
It costs us approximately $15 to deliver healthcare, be it through our vaccination or our healthcare clinics, in terms of cost of vaccines, equipment and other support, and your donations are much needed to support us to expand our clinic offering!
If you have any further queries, please get in touch!
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