Health and Wellbeing

Three neighborhoods in the 12th District — Ashcroft, Lower Fairmount and the Kelvin estate — have no walk-in health provision within two miles. Between them they house nineteen thousand people. The nearest urgent care is a forty-minute bus journey with one change, which is why residents of those three neighborhoods present at the county emergency department at nearly twice the district average.

The cost of the gap

An emergency presentation that a walk-in clinic could have handled costs the regional health budget roughly $340. Ashcroft alone accounts for about 4,100 such presentations a year.

That is $1.4m spent on being in the wrong building.

What we are asking for

1. Three clinics, co-located with existing council buildings to avoid a capital build — the Ashcroft library, the Kelvin community hall, and the Lower Fairmount children’s center.
2. Extended hours: eight to eight on weekdays, nine to two on Saturdays, which is when the presentations actually happen.
3. A published quarterly report on presentations by neighborhood, so the effect is measurable and the argument does not have to be made again from scratch every budget round.

The district does not need more health spending. It needs the spending it already does to happen closer to the people it is for.

Why a movement

Health provision is a regional competence, not a district one. Which means the only lever is sustained, evidenced, public pressure from the people affected — and that has to be organized.