The success of a Centretown-based program designed to meet the health-care needs of Ottawa’s gay community has organizers talking about expanding.
Based at the Centretown Community Health Centre, the bilingual Gay Zone Gaie provides clinical and social services for gay and transsexual men.
The number of people visiting Gay Zone is on the rise, says Christiane Bouchard, a project officer at Ottawa Public Health.
“We’ve made a case for ourselves in the community,” says Bouchard. “More people know about our services and are accessing them now.”
Each Thursday evening from 5 to 8 p.m. gay men can drop into the health centre and get tested for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
The centre also offers social programs so that members of the gay community can mingle and get to know each other in a welcoming environment through activities such as yoga, book clubs and movie nights.
But because the Centretown Community Health Centre only has the resources to run Gay Zone on Thursday evenings its accessibility is limited. “In a perfect world, we would be able to have it a few nights a week or at our own permanent location,” she says.
In the future, Bouchard says, she envisions Gay Zone as its own centre, where gay men can access services every day of the week.
Gay Zone is the only program of its kind in Ottawa where members of the gay community can get their unique health-care needs met in a comfortable and welcoming environment, Bouchard says.
Gay Zone began in 2007 as a pilot project after the Ottawa Gay Men’s Health Initiative contacted the city medical health officer about the continuously high rate of HIV infection among Ottawa’s gay population.
It opened its doors at the Centretown Community Health Centre in 2008 and currently operates as a partnership program between several local organizations including Ottawa Public Health and the AIDS Committee of Ottawa.