Responses from Hayden McGuire, Executive Director of SWITCH Community Health Centre.

Q: Briefly tell us about your organization, where it is located, the services and programs provided, and the communities/population you serve?

A: SWITCH (Student Wellness Initiative Toward Community Health) is Canada’s oldest continuously-run Student Led Community Health Centre, located in one of Saskatoon’s core neighbourhoods, and provides primary health care to Saskatoon residents. We run three mostly-volunteer shifts a week at the clinic. During each shift, SWITCH Community Health Centre volunteers support and provide a variety of services. Daily services will include a meal service, and visits with a primary health care provider or social worker. Shifts generally also include educational programming and childcare (these were limited during the COVID-19 pandemic).

Q: Over the last 2 years the COVID-19 pandemic presented unforeseen challenges in all sectors, and the vulnerable population has been one of the hardest hit groups. What has been the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in your community, how have you been able to address it and how is your organization navigating providing care and services to your clients during this time?

A: Although SWITCH provides health care to any individual who is able to attend at our clinic, our services tend to focus on communities whose members have a higher-than-average rate of food insecurity, of housing insecurity, and are more likely to live below the poverty line.

The restrictions that were necessary to safely navigate the pandemic meant that the services that these communities and individuals relied on to meet their needs were reduced. While this included needs such as food or safe overnight shelter, even washroom access, or sheltering locations during days of extreme weather – whether hot or cold – were limited.

SWITCH worked as a partner with the Saskatoon Interagency Response to COVID to provide a coordinated response with other community agencies by ensuring pandemic supplies, pandemic information, and pandemic services were well-coordinated and planned.

Q: Your Community Health Centre is one of the recipients of CVP National project funding from CACHC (project funded by Public Health Agency of Canada). Could you tell us about your project and its goal? Include any activities and programs carried out and resources created.

A: SWITCH’s goal was to create opportunities for our community members to be vaccinated, and to provide an environment hosted by a Community Health Centre that community members were familiar with and that they, we hoped, trusted to provide them with appropriate and useful information with respect to the COVID-19 vaccine.

Q: What milestones or achievements (including uptake of the vaccine) have you achieved, and lessons learned during the project so far?

A: Our community events have been supported by Saskatchewan Health Authority vaccine teams. We’ve heard from them that the clinics have good attendance (and at two of three of them, we’ve had vaccine supplies run out due to demand).

We’ve also been able to be back in community with the folks we serve, as well as help to introduce them to another agency (Community Veterinary Outreach (CVO) Saskatoon), which provides veterinary services to individuals who might not otherwise be able to access care for their pets. In helping to foster this relationship, SWITCH Community Health Centre is also living our mandate of providing holistic care to our community members.

Q: Have you and your team experienced any challenges or barriers to vaccine promotion and uptake in your community? How have you managed these challenges?

A: The communities that SWITCH Community Health Centre serves, not uniquely, contain a number of people for whom the vaccine may not be particularly accessible. Because SWITCH is a relatively known organization, we worked to put our name behind the clinics we hosted. This has meant not only that our community members who have developed a baseline of trust with us felt more able to participate, both because of that trust and because of their knowledge that SWITCH’s services are provided for them.

Responses from Fahyad, SWITCH’s Volunteer Coordinator: 

“I think the vaccine fair was a huge success and demonstrates how effective incentives can be to increase healthy behaviours even if the incentive is not directly related to the healthy behavior (i.e., getting the vaccine). The nurses on site had mentioned that they had run out of vaccines at one point, indicating that community members were receptive and accessing the service.… I think many organizations can benefit from the vaccine fairs model to increase vaccine uptake and other healthy behaviours in communities that may otherwise not be accessing these services.”

Veronica, SWITCH’s Program Coordinator pointed out that our volunteers, who our community members may recognize, may have helped community members trust the information they were receiving. She also pointed out that although volunteers are often training for healthcare fields, they are generally not yet part of institutions. Some of our community members likely have distrust of the institutions but might nevertheless extend their trust to SWITCH students.

She also pointed out that every vaccine administered gets us closer to collective protection from COVID-19, and that the vaccines provided speak for themselves in the effectiveness of SWITCH’s community outreach, both in providing accessible vaccinations, as well as effectively communicating appropriate information about the vaccine.

Q: Did your project involve any partnerships or collaborations? If yes, please describe. What relationships if any did you leverage to ensure the delivery of your project.

A: Absolutely. For both of our pet-related events, the Pet Fair, and the CVO Clinic, we worked with CVO Saskatoon. This meant that we could collaborate with community health care providers who may be overlooked when we consider community care: those who support the well-being of our furry family members.

We were also very generously supported by our health partners. The Saskatchewan Health Authority worked with us to get vaccine teams in place at all three of our events, to ensure that while we provided vaccine education and support, the vaccine itself was readily available to those who wanted it.

Q: With new variants and the approval of booster doses, what effect have these had on the work your centre carries out as well as the CVP National Project, in other words how are you adapting to this ongoing public health issue?

A: With the vaccine coverage in our communities, we have used the current project as a way to ensure that any person needing a vaccination was provided with as much opportunity to receive it as we could manage – that is, we didn’t focus on which dose, simply on ensuring that people who attended were closer to fully vaccinated than before they walked through our doors.

With the continuing need to ensure good vaccine coverage, we are excited to look forward to continuing to support this work with a focus on ensuring booster coverage is as high as it can be as well!

Q: How has the funding through the CVP National Project helped your centre and the community it serves?

A: The CVP funding was instrumental in letting us host the wonderful community events that we did: it was what made it possible for us to dream of creative ways to engage with our communities about vaccinations. We’re so grateful for the ways that the CVP funding allowed us to engage with SWITCH, to ensure that we’re living up to our mission of supporting equitable health care in Saskatoon.

Q: What are the next steps for your centre after the CVP project with regards to COVID-19 and your hope for the future?

A: As we continue to navigate the pandemic, we’re hoping that we’re able to increasingly regain our pre-pandemic capacities for community care. We hope that we are and continue to be a trusted resource for folks who want to have access to culturally safe and equitable healthcare, whether in relation to COVID-19 vaccines or to other concerns affecting their health and well-being.

Q: What do you think your experiences throughout the pandemic say about the ability of Community Health Centres to adapt to emerging social and public health issues, and the importance of Community Health Centres within our health and social service systems?

A: I think that Community Health Centres often operate in community and, we hope, in response to community needs. Because of this, I see these centres as key in both identifying and fulfilling health needs for the communities they are a part of. Community Health Centres can pivot to new services relatively quickly, and are well-placed to provide care in response to new national health concerns.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to share?

A: If you’re interested in learning more about Student-Run or Student-Led Clinics / Community Health Centres (SRCs/SLCs), folks at SWITCH are always happy to take some time to provide what information we can about how we came to be, and what we’ve learned from 17 years of serving Saskatoon’s core neighbourhood communities.