OUTREACH HEALTHCARE CLINICS
Recognising that poor health is a significant contributor to, and resultant of, homelessness. With fewer and fewer general practitioners bulk billing, people experiencing disadvantage are priced out of preventative care. Not only this, the very matter of booking a consult, organising transportation, and being in an unfamiliar medical setting are major barriers to accessing care. For this reason, hospital emergency departments are often the entry point into the healthcare system for people from vulnerable groups.
Often these presentations are entirely preventable with high-touchpoint primary care. Through our vaccine clinics, we repeatedly saw this, and so set about trying to break this negative feedback loop, one friend at a time.
In May 2022, we launched our first regular health clinic, entirely run by a team of medical students (Lara, Evi, Nipun, Suki and Aidan) with the support of an experienced and caring General Practitioner in Dr Peter McKain. This clinic runs every Wednesday between 5pm and 7pm, providing care to those in insecure housing staying in Spring Hill with Beddown.
We have a further clinic, which launched in January 2023 at Tony’s Kitchen in Toowoomba, with another clinic planned for launch in Ipswich in late 2023.
If you are a general practitioner, or know one, that is interested about being involved, please get in touch!