How can neighbourhoods get better health care? Tips from Black Creek’s innovative on-the-road approach

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How can neighbourhoods get better health care? Tips from Black Creek’s innovative on-the-road approach

The Green Line team visited Black Creek Community Health Centre to learn how its innovative solutions, the Wheels to Wellness van and Community Ambassadors program, take health care straight to residents' doorsteps.

Dr. Mar Lyn stands by the Black Creek Health Centre's mobile healthcare unit.

Dr. Mar Lyn, low-density population health manager at the Black Creek Community Health Centre, stands by the Wheels to Wellness mobile health unit at Jane Street and Wilson Avenue.
📸: Amanda Seraphina/The Green Line.

Amanda Seraphina James Rajakumar BW

Amanda Seraphina James Rajakumar

Indian immigrant with a post-grad in journalism from Centennial College. Now living in Grange Park, meeting new people, and hearing different stories. Has four names, so it’s a pick-your-player situation.

 

Feb. 21, 2025

Going to the hospital can be intimidating or even scary for some, so how do these Torontonians get the care they need?

The Black Creek Community Health Centre is taking a different approach to health care, going beyond the walls of its facility and into neighbourhood streets.

Black Creek is one of Toronto’s 31 Neighbourhood Improvement Areas (NIAs), which are given priority status for funding because they lack sufficient social infrastructure. A tool that’s used to determine this status is the Neighbourhood Equity Index, which evaluates neighbourhoods based on economic opportunities, social development, participation in decision-making, physical surroundings and healthy lives.

Black Creek scored the lowest of all Toronto neighbourhoods in the city’s Neighbourhood Equity Index. Simply put, low equity can look like higher unemployment, fewer high school graduations, lack of community spaces and declining health.

Icon graphic on determinants of low equity.

The characteristics of a low-equity neighbourhood, according to the City of Toronto.
📸: Paul Zwambag for The Green Line.

That’s why the Black Creek Community Health Centre is taking health care beyond its physical headquarters to provide services to locals in the immediate neighbourhood.

Tamanah Sultani, a health promoter at the centre, says there are stigmas in Black Creek against vaccines and medications, as well as doubts about the services it provides.

“That's what we try to help with. It’s to reduce those stigmas, and build a team that's very trustworthy and a team that the community recognizes — that they see on a daily basis, that live in the community,” she explains.

One of the centre’s newest tools is Wheels to Wellness, a mobile health unit equipped with blood-sugar and blood-pressure testing.

Dr. Mar Lyn, the centre’s low-density population health manager, drives the health care van through the streets of Black Creek, stopping at apartment complexes, parks and common community spaces to provide health checkups to local residents.

Black Creek's latest healthcare solution, the Wheels to Wellness van.

The Wheels to Wellness van parked outside of an apartment building at Jane Street and William Cragg Drive where the health centre regularly hosts a wellness clinic.
📸: Amanda Seraphina/The Green Line.

“The traditional approach to medicine has failed a certain group of people. They have not been able to get the access that they deserve because they're dealing with their immediate needs, which is food, clothing and shelter,” Lyn explains. “Oftentimes, those take precedence over their actual health.”

He adds that residents only attend to their health when they end up in an emergency room, at a very late stage, which ultimately costs Ontario’s health-care system thousands of dollars.

Dr. Mar Lyn out in the community for healthcare outreaches.

Dr. Mar Lyn socializes with residents while conducting health checkups at the Parrot Nest Family Restaurant (pictured left) and Yorkgate Mall (pictured right.)
📸: Black Creek Community Health Centre.

Especially when it comes to outside-of-the-box health care, Lyn emphasizes that it’s important to take a cultural approach because it helps vulnerable communities feel at ease with medical practitioners.

“Their guards are down and then you can speak to them in that sort of lingo or in terms of habits that they typically wouldn’t get when they go to one of the other places where people don’t identify with them — sometimes with food, religion, cultural life,” he says. “It makes a big difference.”

Wheels to Wellness isn’t the centre’s first innovation. In early 2019, it started a community ambassador program where health-care professionals trained local residents to share information about general health checkups with their neighbours.

Black Creek Community Health Centre, a facility administering healthcare in the neighbourhood.

Black Creek Community Health Centre, which is located at Jane Street and Wilson Avenue.
📸: Amanda Seraphina/The Green Line.

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit, these ambassadors helped fight medical misinformation, and encouraged people who were unwilling or unable to visit Black Creek Community Health Centre to get the right care.

The centre also started a diabetes-focused coaching program. It targets Black Creek’s large African, Caribbean and Black population, who are at a higher risk of getting diabetes, according to a January 2025 study funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) and Public Health Ontario (PHO).

Festus Eromi Paul, a diabetes coach from one of Black Creek's healthcare initiatives.

Festus Eromi Paul, a health coach at Black Creek Community Health Centre, sits inside a wellness clinic at Jane Street and William Cragg Drive.
📸: Amanda Seraphina/The Green Line.

Health-care professionals trained 15 residents to be coaches, including Festus Eromi Paul who got connected to a dietician at the centre two years ago. The dietician monitored Paul’s food intake and activities for a year, which helped him reverse his diabetic condition.

“From what I've experienced practically, I did and it worked, so I just want to give back to the community. So that's why I joined to become a health coach,” he says.

As of last month, the centre made profiles for the health coaches on its website, and started contacting people at risk of getting diabetes, offering four months of coaching on healthy living to prevent the chronic disease.

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Black Creek Community Health Centre

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