HALIFAX — A new health center in downtown Halifax is the first of its kind in Nova Scotia to provide specialized medical support to the city’s growing urban Aboriginal population.
The clinic will be located in the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Center and will be staffed by a team of doctors and nurses who will provide primary care to Aboriginal people living in Halifax.
The Wije’winen Health Center will be led by Dr. Brent Young, an Anishnaabe family physician and academic director of Indigenous health at Dalhousie University’s medical school.
Young says the opening of the center is a watershed moment for access to health care for urban Aboriginal people in Halifax, adding that it’s just a starting point.
The center will have three physicians working part-time, and Young says recruitment is underway to add a fourth physician who will work alongside a full-time nurse practitioner and a family practice nurse.
Young says the center will handle a patient list of 800 to 1,000 people, and he hopes to see the clinic expand in the coming years.
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