Native American Community Clinic
Report date
March 2023
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
Our staffing model was instrumental. We were able to put a harm reduction services supervisor in place who was able to provide structure and support to our outreach team and linkages to care to the clinic.
Providing phones and data cards to those experiencing homelessness to connect them to telehealth with NACC and other community resources. The phones were successful in keeping our relationships with unhoused individuals allowing them to progress in their care plans.
Key lessons learned
We learned that we needed guidelines around the phone resources since they were in very high demand in the community. We had to choose the most at-risk individuals to support.
We continue to learn lessons around our telehealth deployment and engagement strategies. We learned how to overcome environmental barriers and have used our transportation resources to bring patients from housing encampments to the clinic for services.
Reflections on inclusive, collaborative or resourceful problem-solving
Collaborative and Inclusive- The collaboration among SSPs has been important in providing peer support for our staff as well as being to develop a deploy a strategy for engaging with the homeless population and linking participants to resources. NACC is inclusive with our partnerships and is open to working with community members and organizations who align with NACC's mission statement. We engage with members across care teams as well as volunteers and students from many backgrounds. The versatility and inclusivity of our program continues to attract innovative partnerships.
Other key elements of Community Innovation
Another key element are NACC's harm reduction philosophy and traditional medicine lens that guide our programming decisions.
Understanding the problem
Our work provided clarity around the complexities of telehealth in an encampment setting. We have been able to identify triage models as well as exploring alternate strategies for different environmental and individual situations.
If you could do it all over again...
To be prepared for small gains in areas of patient engagement. To be patient while working with participants, many of the relationships take months, if not years, to develop and maintain. Consistency and accessibility are key.