If you didn’t realize health care and wellbeing services could be hip, you haven’t yet heard of EdgeWest: Healthcare for Youth, a clinic serving young people aged 13-29 in the west end of Toronto.

In early June, the clinic, which operates out of its own dedicated, youth-designed space at a Community Health Centre, was celebrated with a province-wide Transformative Change Award from the Association of Ontario Health Centres, to help recognize its unique innovation and key contributions to better caring for its underserved population, and for its work building a collaborative model with partners across the health system.

The team at EdgeWest, led by Davenport-Perth Neighbourhood and Community Health Centre (DPNCHC) and Planned Parenthood Toronto (PPT), first identified that youth weren’t able to access the mental health, primary care, as well as sexual and reproductive health care they needed.

“There was a severe lack of services in the west end of Toronto, especially those that are geared to youth, where youth feel comfortable,” says Sarah Hobbs-Blyth, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Toronto. “We found that youth were accessing emergency departments for illnesses and other situations and issues that could be best managed in the community.”

But Hobbs-Blyth cites barriers to care that were keeping youth from accessing existing services in places other than hospitals, that then led to the formation of the core philosophies that underpin EdgeWest’s principles, such as sex-positive, youth engaged, and LGBTQ-informed care. And it’s those principles that guided the design of EdgeWest’s space, which includes a gender-neutral restroom, tons of sexual and reproductive awareness materials, and a staff trained and equipped to provide services in a different way.

“Youth don’t want to go to other places where they could run into adults they know, or they don’t want to access services in places where they’re not sure how they’re going to be treated because of their age,” Sarah Hobbs-Blyth says. “So EdgeWest offers sexual and reproductive health care, primary care, mental health services and peer support in a youth-focused, sex-positive, LGBTQ-positive, non-judgmental, pro-choice way.”

Beyond the two founding partners of EdgeWest, the clinic also draws on services from Loft Community Services, Legal Aid Ontario, Sick Kids Hospital and St. Stephen’s Community House, to help build a comprehensive suite of care that puts the patient and their needs – from health and wellness to social services – at the centre of the programs that clinic offers. And that core philosophy of patient-centredness has been in action from the very beginning of EdgeWest’s development, says Kim Fraser, Executive Director of DPNCHC.

“In the development of the clinic, we did outreach to 300 youth to ask them: what kind of services we should offer, what days we should be open, how we would know if we were providing the right services, and they gave us a lot of feedback,” says Fraser. “Relying on the voice of youth has been very important to us. They have a very different perspective on many things: use of social media, how people want to connect – there’s a lot of things that you wouldn’t even consider if you weren’t getting youth feedback and advice along the way.”

For services, including Loft’s, that provide mental health outreach and assistance, listening to the clients’ needs and meeting them on terms they were comfortable with was another core priority of EdgeWest’s mission.

“Generally speaking, the mental health issues that youth are experiencing, they weigh a lot on them. We saw a lot of anxiety, and a lot of depression. So it felt like a service like this could actually provide interventions early enough so that they don’t spend the next decade struggling with anxiety and other things that can really hold them back,” Fraser says.

Another important difference of the EdgeWest approach has been to closely examine the data on the population they are aiming to serve. Doing so is what led to the carefully designed approach that EdgeWest has developed to sexual and reproductive health, as well as the clinic’s understanding that certain barriers to care, such as being marginalized for multiple socio-economic reasons at once, can have a particularly strong effect on youth.

“Seeing the data, and hearing from youth directly in the needs assessment, in their own words, that they haven’t been able to access the services they need, that was the impetus that pushed things forward,” says Hobbs-Blyth.

“It was really important to train our staff on what it meant to be sex-positive, youth-positive, LGBTQ-positive,” Fraser adds. “We can say those things, but there has to be actually something that is behind that.”

And the effects? EdgeWest staff see them every day for young clients who insist, “I am really glad a place like this is available. I wouldn’t know where else to go.”

And when the program surveyed its users for responses, the bigger picture could sometimes be even more pronounced:

“One of the comments that stood out the most for me in our client survey results was that EdgeWest saved their life,” Hobbs-Blyth says. “For me that was very powerful, meaningful and a bit surprising, actually, to have made such a big impact.”

But if making health care hip is what it takes to change and save lives, it’s what EdgeWest will keep doing, and keep spreading the word about to help transform youth health care across the province.

“We are hoping that by sharing what we’re doing, we’re going to have organizations that are interested in replicating our model,” Fraser says.

2016 Transformative Change Award - EdgeWest from AOHC ACSO on Vimeo.