I thought I would take a few minutes out of my oh-so-hectic workday (that is extreme sarcasm, by the by) to talk about a couple of clinics local to me and why they’re so wonderful. Seemed like a spirit-lifting kind of post, though perhaps not quite as much as the gay animal couples.
Nine Circles Community Health Centre
This organization is involved in harm reduction activities, including needle distribution; as far as I know there’s only one other place in the city, the Methadone Intervention and Needle Exchange program, that provides clean needles to drug users. They provide HIV and STI testing, care for clients who are HIV positive, and an HIV/STI info line. These services are available elsewhere, of course, but they are strengthened at Nine Circles by the organization’s community focus. Nine Circles participates in some pretty fascinating research projects and they are trans-friendly, both in theory and in practice.
Anyway. I like them. Also because I went there once and my nurse-practitioner dude made me laugh so hard that he could barely give me a pelvic exam.
(Too much information, facebook creepers? Sorry. Get used to it.)
Klinic Community Health Centre
Klinic has two locations in the semi-inner city area where the provide a variety of services. They offer counselling for sexual assault and domestic abuse as well as crisis counselling and rural stress phone services. Their health services for men and women are primarily reproductive/sexual health care services, though they do offer limited primary care services to people in the community as needed. Their education services include Teen Talk, which lets young folks teach young folks about all kinds of sexy things like condoms. Klinic, like Nine Circles, has some programs geared specifically toward men, which the Women’s clinic I work at obviously does not. They are pro-choice and gay positive, and very welcoming.
Both clinics have volunteer opportunities available. As does the Women’s Health Clinic, just to get in a word for me and mine.
Back to work, maybe.
