Centre would ease the city’s “primary care crisis” by serving up to 6,000 marginalized patients, proponents say.
When Dr. Jaclyn Vanek moved to Peterborough about five years ago, she went looking for the city’s community health centre.
Vanek was newly graduated from medical school, and she’d come to Peterborough to complete her residency. During her studies in Ottawa, Vanek had worked at the Centretown Community Health Centre, where she had the opportunity to serve some of that city’s most marginalized residents. She liked the centre’s collaborative approach, which brought together a range of health professionals to meet patients’ complex health needs.
So it was only natural that Vanek would try to find something similar in Peterborough. But she couldn’t. “I just assumed everywhere had a CHC,” Vanek said. “So I looked around and I was like, ‘Where’s the CHC?’”
Ontario has dozens of community health centres operating in more than 100 locations all over the province. But Vanek quickly found out she had moved to one of the few Ontario cities without one.
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