The Espace santé citoyen (ESC) was established in 2018-2019. The ESC advocates an intersectoral approach and aims to better align the supply of care with the needs of local populations. The mandate of the ESC is to provide innovative solutions to the various issues of inaccessibility and inequality in health by placing the people affected by the inconsistencies of institutions and services at the center of the social transformation process.
The general objective of the process is to make the social health problems that the communities share collective, so that they can serve as a lever for mobilization and thus propel social changes with the goal that all the actors of Montreal-Nord be sensitized to see health as a global issue and of dignity.
The idea is to allow the population to express themselves on their realities and to make accessible spaces for the creation of solutions that would allow their aspirations to be recognized.
The Citizen’s Health Space project, with the support of many partners, focused on the social determinants of health in an attempt to partially fill the gap in services offered by the public health network for people experiencing various forms of exclusion. The ESC has created welcoming spaces for dialogue, popular education and training that are accessible and respectful to engage citizens on health-related issues.
The activities include four areas of intervention:
- Diversity and health education
- The accompaniment in care
- Health rights
- Health and nutrition
