We are Ready for More

For over 30 years

For over 30 years, Women’s Health in Women’s Hands Community Health Centre (CHC) has been a place for friendship, fellowship, healing and support for racialized women in the Greater Toronto Area. In 2021, we embarked on a strategic planning process that provided us the space to reflect deeply on our origins and our journey to the present day. As we consulted with clients, staff and community partners - some of whom had been with us from the very beginning - we were struck by the vital role that Women’s Health in Women’s Hands CHC had played and continues to play in people’s lives. We were also called to do more. We were told to be bold, more inclusive, more accessible, more responsive.

To this end, we have strengthened our foundational statements and replaced them with clear, bold and inclusive vision, mission and commitment statements that will act as fog lights to help us navigate through these challenging times.

From the economic, social, mental and physical devastation of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, to the aftershocks of global protests against police brutality and anti-Black racism, or the precipitous rise in incidents of gender-based violence; racialized women, trans and non-binary people exist at the intersection of many harms.

With each passing year, we have been asked to do more with less and we have risen to the challenge. However, we have reached the limits of what we can do with what we have. We need to do more with more. We believe the time is right for us to take decisive steps to actualize our vision and fulfill our purpose.

We are delighted to present the following strategic priorities:

STRENGTHEN
We will strengthen our core and invest in our capacity for growth and sustainability

SHARPEN
We will sharpen our focus and deepen our response

BUILD
We will build and create a physical site for our Centre for Excellence

We appreciate your trust and support as we continue to build the solid foundations of this storied organization.

Lori-Ann Green-Walker
Executive Director

Mahima Madhava
President, Board of Directors

we are

Women’s Health in Women’s Hands CHC

Women’s Health in Women’s Hands CHC started off as the Whole Centre for Women’s Health in 1990. One year later, the centre was renamed Women’s Health in Women’s Hands CHC. Since the early 1990s, Women’s Health in Women’s Hands CHC has expanded the scope of our health care service offerings from health promotion to nutritional health promotion, pre-and post-natal programs, HIV programs, diabetes education programs, mental health programs and expanded our clinical team which includes physicians, nurse practitioners, chiropodists, nurses, dietitians, mental health therapists, social workers and midwives.

Women’s Health in Women’s Hands CHC provides women, trans and non-binary people from the African, Black, Caribbean, Latin American and South Asian Communities in Toronto and surrounding municipalities with culturally safe, relevant, and responsive primary healthcare. We work from a trauma-informed, intersectional feminist, pro-choice, anti-racist, anti-oppressive, sex-positive, harm reduction, and multilingual participatory framework.

We address issues of access to health care, including removing barriers to access for racialized women, trans and non-binary people, taking into account the social determinants of health. Through our research hub, we build and generate scientific knowledge on the health of racialized women, trans and non-binary people and support and promote effective mechanisms for knowledge translation and exchange between researchers, policymakers, service providers, clients and communities to influence policy and practice.

We also engage in evidence-based advocacy for and with the communities we serve and we participate in community activities to create the social and environmental conditions that promote health and wellness.

Reimagined and

Fit for Purpose

The process of strategic planning has afforded us the opportunity to explore and reimagine our foundational statements to align with who we serve, what we excel at and our vision for the future. Like many others in the healthcare sector, we have been stretched. The pandemic has added urgency to re-evaluate our vision, mission and values and strengthened our resolve to challenge and dismantle structures that negatively impact women, trans and non-binary people. We know that health is more than just the absence of disease, it is a resource that allows people to meet their needs, to cope with their circumstances and realize their dreams. We debated at length how we could continue to evolve our standard of care, be more inclusive and serve a clientele that was increasingly drifting from the core of the city and facing mounting pressure and marginalization.

Introducing our new foundational statements:

MISSION

Our Commitment

As the only centre of its kind in North America, WHIWH CHC aims to empower racialized women, trans and non-binary people, and improve their health outcomes. Working together as a multidisciplinary team to provide quality holistic health care, we are committed to working from a trauma-informed, intersectional feminist, pro-choice, anti-racist, anti-oppressive, sex-positive, harm reduction, and multilingual participatory framework in addressing the issue of access to healthcare for our mandated priority populations.

In action, this looks like:

Providing low barrier and culturally safe, relevant and specific holistic health care. Addressing the issue of access to healthcare (encompassing all the social and structural determinants of health) caused by factors including poverty, gender, race, violence, sexual orientation, religion, culture, weight bias, language, age, disability, immigration, class, and socio-economic circumstances.
Supporting a client’s right to make informed choices about their health.
Enhancing our clients sense of well-being in an atmosphere that allows us to validate each other's definitions and experiences.
Engaging in systems advocacy, developing strategies to remove the barriers embedded within the healthcare system which strongly influence how one experiences health and how one is treated by the health care system.
Advocating for and with our communities for change.
Building scientific knowledge and evidence on the health of women, trans and non-binary clients.
Participating in community activities which create the social and environmental conditions that promote health and wellness.

Our Strategic
Priorities

As Women’s Health in Women’s Hands CHC moves towards an overarching ten-year goal - established in 2016 - of becoming a Centre of Excellence in Community-Based Primary Care and Health Equity for Racialized Women, Trans and Non-Binary People, it is essential that future and agreed upon strategic directions support this.

Through comprehensive engagement with key thought leaders, community partners and collaborators, as well as our internal experts – our staff – we will be executing on this plan for the duration of this period.

The following three strategic directions were confirmed at the strategic planning retreat:

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Share our priorities

STRENGTHEN

Having solid operational infrastructure will be invaluable for Women’s Health in Women’s Hands CHC to continue to ride the waves of change while becoming a Centre of Excellence. We will make investments to modernize and streamline our operations, upgrade our tools and equipment, and ensure that we have the right complement of employees working in an environment that empowers them to actualize their full potential. We will develop fund development and communications strategies that will refresh our brand identity, convey our value, and increase and diversify our funding. This new portfolio of funders, donors and supporters will enable us to expand our reach, better serve our existing clients and ensure our sustainability . At the core, we want to continue to elevate and deliver a high quality client-centred experience.

Objectives

Assess our current operational, administrative, program and service structure to ensure we have the right complement of human resources.
Review employee compensation, wellness and benefits packages to ensure we provide competitive offerings that motivate and retain staff and reflect our intersectional feminist values.
Invest in continuous staff development and training to ensure that staff are empowered and capacitated to carry out their work in full alignment with our mission and values.
Determine the needs, invest in the development of much needed operational systems, tools and planning processes including IT systems (hardware, software and expertise) process automation and digital health capacity.
Develop a values-driven resource mobilization strategy to diversify and grow revenue streams and ensure growth and sustainability.

SHARPEN

In line with our commitment to become a Centre for Excellence, we will continue to extend our role as an expert and leader in the delivery of high-quality, evidence-informed primary health care for racialized women, trans and non-binary people. We will strive to sharpen our focus and strengthen our capacity to address the social and structural determinants of health in order to deepen the response to the organization’s priority populations with a special focus on racialized youth, seniors, refugee women and women with complex care needs/multiple comorbidities. We will bring a systematic approach to partnering for advocacy and capacity building which will be informed by our in-house, groundbreaking and intersectional research. Lastly, we commit to disseminating our findings and sharing our work with a broad swath of stakeholders including clients, partners, the community, policy makers, government as well as funders.

Objectives

Increase our ability to support clients to navigate service systems, provide more comprehensive services, innovate and where appropriate, expand programs within a hybrid model which balances the convenience of virtual programming and telemedicine with in-person offerings.

Create opportunities for greater collaboration and reciprocal, equitable partnerships within the Alliance for Healthier Communities, community and governmental partners, strengthening the capacity of others.

Become a Research Centre of Excellence for the health of racialized women, trans and non-binary people that is recognized and respected as a subject matter expert in the sector.

Develop a communication and branding strategy that modernizes the WHIWH CHC brand and highlights its offerings, successes and attracts new supporters. Overhaul the website to increase functionality and reflect our new strategic priorities.

BUIILD

After several decades in the same downtown location, we have an opportunity to evolve our model to better fit the needs of our clients. The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the spatial exclusion by race and place that is evident in the city of Toronto and surrounding areas. Given the demographics of the downtown core and the systematic divestment in the inner and outer suburbs of Toronto, where most racialized people actually live, we believe it is long overdue to develop a new community-based, accessible and central space to house the future iteration of WHIWH CHC. This will be augmented by the introduction of multiple satellite and mobile locations to extend our ability to deliver on our mission and deepen our impact.

Objectives

Build/create an accessible, safe, culturally-relevant, community-embedded space to house our Centre of Excellence and anchor our work.
Design and execute a major gifts and donations capital campaign for the construction/renovation of a new building, the acquisition of land and the purchase of large-scale equipment.
Establish multiple satellite and mobile locations across the GTA through strategic partnerships to extend our ability to deliver programs and services.

Thank You

The development of READY FOR MORE: Women’s Health in Women’s Hands CHC Strategic Plan 2022-2027 would not have been possible without the engagement of our outstanding staff team, who actively participated in this planning process and brought to it their years of expertise, experience, and an exceptional and deep commitment to the work that we do. Without you, none of this is possible!

Heartfelt thanks go out to our vital community partners, donors and clients who took the time to share their valuable insights and hopes for the future of Women’s Health in Women’s Hands CHC. We deeply appreciate you.

This plan and the process that led to it, was made possible by the stewardship of our Executive Director Lori-Ann Green-Walker and the vision of our committed and engaged Board of Directors: Mahima Madhava, Paula Bourne, Rumana Chowdhury, Allyson Collymore, Millicent Dixon, Sharon Merwin, Rosabelle Sankar, Emily Verghis, and Nana Yanful.

Special thanks to the team at There Management Consulting Inc. for their guidance and support, and to our incredible Strategic Planning Committee, who put their trust in this planning process and dug in to do the work.

Ready for More

Strategic plan 2022-2027

ready for more

Women’s Health in Women’s Hands CHC Strategic Plan

Foreword

For over 30 years