Health Providers Against Poverty

MISSION, GOALS, AND VALUE STATEMENTS

Mission

• Advancing initiatives and access to services related to the mental well-being of individuals experiencing homelessness, precarious housing and other marginalized statuses associated with poverty. We see poverty and socioeconomic status as critical determinants of mental health.

• We focus on needs essential to wellbeing such as food, housing, medication, and primary care including needs related to mental wellbeing such as psychosocial interventions and assessments.

Goals

• Partnerships: Building partnerships with like-minded agencies and community groups in service of mission-based initiatives.

• Awareness: Broadening societal and system-level awareness of the intrinsic relationship between mental health and social determinants of health including poverty, stigma, and racism.

• Advocacy: Advocate for reducing barriers and interventions aimed at eliminating systemic social inequities including housing support, food security, community-led mental health initiatives, and accessible, affordable and effective therapeutic options.

• Education: Advocacy and outreach surrounding the support and training of community professionals working in the mental health domain who serve individuals experiencing homelessness, precarious housing and other marginalized statuses associated with poverty.

Values

• Person-centered: We believe that all peoples should be supported in building and maintaining control over their lives. We view all peoples as experts in their own lives, deserving of being at the center of decisions made about their lives.

• Accountability: We recognize that inequities in social determinants of health are rooted in structural and institutional problems. We endeavour to carry out our initiatives and mission with the utmost responsibility and accountability.

• Humility: We acknowledge that healthcare professionals have valuable insights to share which are not above individuals with lived experience. As such, we work to dismantle power differentials in all the initiatives embarked upon. This includes aiming to dismantle and reform harmful academic, health-based and other system-level factors which perpetuate colonization and marginalization.

Collective Care Resource for Healthcare Providers