New Outreach Locations
We are expanding our Community Health Program!
Equi’s Community Health program creates infrastructure to support marginalized people so that the community has a safety net, means to bounce back, and can maintain health and wellbeing during the pandemic. Most importantly, our community health workers (CHWs) build genuine community with the people they work with.
Our CHWs:
Relay important public health information in group announcements, fliers, and in person including information on COVID-19 and access to COVID-19 vaccines.
Assist community members with learning about OHP and other health resources and connect them to an insurance liaison
Assist with enrolling in needed health services, such as ride to care, mental health programs, and addictions management programs
Assist with scheduling appointments, providing appointment reminders, and facilitate telehealth visits
Provide basic first aid triage and connection to services to folks who may need immediate access to mental or physical health care, and refer to the nurse case manager for complex cases
Host a space where folks may come to get their immediate and non-emergent health needs met and may meet with providers in person or over telehealth. In that space they offer medical supplies such as bandaids, wound cleaning supplies, tampons and pads, masks, hand sanitizer, safer sex kits, and harm reduction resources as needed.
Since April 2020, we have served upwards of 150 houseless Portlanders as well as their contacts living at and around the C(3)PO villages, with mental and physical healthcare outreach, resource connection services, COVID-19 testing, and contact tracing. Now, we are working directly with trusted community partners to get these services into the hands of more community members.
Healthcare is not as simple as offering a service; we often strategize with folks around navigating complicated barriers to care, and fiercely advocate for them when they are outright neglected and discriminated against within larger health systems. Our main challenges are addressing social determinants of health such as food and housing insecurity, as well as fighting systems of oppression like racism, ableism, and transphobia that cut people off from the care they need.
This work is focused around LGBTQI2s folks, People of color, people with significant mental health concerns, houseless folks, people living with addictions, people living with disabilities, and elders.
Starting the week of Monday, November 15th, come find us in these new locations:
Mondays 12p-4p
Q Center
4115 N. Mississippi Ave.
Portland, OR 97212
#4 Bus line - Stop #3976
Thursdays 3p-6p
Hygiene 4 All’s Hygiene Hub
On the corner of SE Martin Luther King Boulevard and SE Belmont Street under the Morrison Bridge
#6 Bus line - Stop #11484