Engagement in Context: Reflections from Jenn Broad and Paula Tookey of the South Riverdale Community Health Centre

Most of our episodes have been about engagement in institutional healthcare spaces - places like hospitals or research institutes. But of course, there are a multitude of other places where patient or service user engagement takes place. 

Our guests are Jenn Broad and Paula Tookey. They work out of the South Riverdale Community Health Center in East Toronto. Jenn is the Program Manager of Harm Reduction and Hep C. And Paula is the Manager of Keep Six, a consumption and treatment service, which is a health service described as a place where people inject, snort, or orally consume pre-obtained drugs in a safe, hygienic and welcoming environment under the supervision of trained staff. 

As you listen, we encourage you to tune in to their insights specific to engagement within a community that experiences persistent stigma and systemic discrimination. What we learned from talking to Jenn and Paula is that engagement in certain health related community services, like harm reduction programs, has different and possibly higher stakes for the people involved than what we typically think of as "patient engagement" in mainstream or organizational health services.

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Guests:

• Jenn Broad, Program Manager of Harm Reduction and Hep-C, South Riverdale Community Health Centre
• Paula Tookey, Manager of Keep Six Consumption and Treatment Service, South Riverdale Community Health Centre

Mentioned in this episode:

• South Riverdale Community Health Centre
• From client to co-worker: a case study of the transition to peer work within a multi-disciplinary hepatitis c treatment team in Toronto, Canada