March 30, 2023
The Women's Mobile Primary Care Program aims to deliver healthcare to women in a culturally appropriate manner. The health unit's van teams doctors, nurses and social workers with Indigenous knowledge keepers, elders and healers to provide care from an Indigenous perspective. It offers women-specific services from pap smears to IUD insertions and removals, sexual health testing and birth control. The van operates three days a week and will park in different locations in the Downtown Eastside. It'll also aim to provide holistic health treatments for the Indigenous community. In Vancouver, 77% of homeless women said healthcare and mental healthcare access were urgent and primary needs.