Addressing the Whole Picture of Community Health
Health care is often traditionally pictured as a single interaction, such as a doctor’s visit, a prescription, or a trip to the emergency room. These traditional models are essential and are structured, by necessity, to provide timely and focused care for immediate medical concerns. However, they are not typically designed to address the broader and complex social and economic conditions like poverty, housing instability, and early adversity that fundamentally shape a person’s health over time.
Community Health Centres (CHC’s) fill this gap by delivering care that is both medically and social informed, with a community-based, collaborative focus on integration and prevention. They provide services that reflect the full picture of a person’s life and work to remove barriers to accessing the care people need, when they need it.
What is a Community Health Centre?
Community Health Centres (CHC’s) are locally governed, non-profit organizations that provide comprehensive, team-based health and social services. They are designed to meet the needs of individuals and families who face significant barriers to both accessing and benefitting holistically from traditional models of care.
CHC’s recognize that health and wellbeing are shaped not only by biology and medicine, but also by the social determinants of health. These determinants include income, housing, education, early childhood experiences, social connection, food security, and access to health care. These factors are further influenced by the effects of trauma, discrimination, and systemic marginalization.
This model of community centred care is aligned with the Government of Alberta’s vision for accessible, coordinated and integrated health and social services that improve overall population health and reduce pressure on acute care systems. CHC’s do not treat presenting health concerns in isolation. Instead, care is holistic, culturally safe, trauma-informed, and designed to meet people wherever they are in their overall journey toward health, recovery, stability, and wellbeing.
How CUPS Delivers Integrated, Community-Based Care
At CUPS Calgary, being a Community Health Centre means offering more than a single point of care. It means surrounding people with coordinated care team that helps them stabilize, grow, and thrive in all areas of life.
Our care teams include nurse practitioners, physicians, mental health therapists, child development specialists, social workers, peer support workers, and many others. They collaborate across disciplines and co-design programs with the people they support, ensuring that dignity, trust, and the human experience remain central to our approach.
Our services span three core pillars: Health, Basic Needs and Housing, and Family and Child Development. These programs are intentionally connected because the individuals and families we serve experience their needs in connected and overlapping ways.
For Example:
- An expectant parent receiving prenatal care may also be connected to early childhood development supports, such as parenting programs, childcare referrals, and consultations with child development specialists. Through their coordinated care team, they receive wraparound support that promotes their own health and wellbeing while laying a stronger foundation for their child’s growth, development, and long-term stability.
- An individual experiencing homelessness may connect with a primary care provider to address urgent health concerns, while also receiving support to obtain identification and access programs that address basic needs, food, and income security. With the guidance of a client and housing navigator, they may also receive support in finding stable housing and building a foundation for long-term stability.
- A person living with a chronic health condition may receive nursing care, addiction recovery support and mental health counselling, alongside referral-based support for more intensive recovery-focused, and culturally safe services in community. This care may be provided onsite at CUPS, or through outreach in the community, always grounded in a personalized care plan that reflects their unique needs and goals.
These are not separate services. They are part of a unified, whole-person approach that supports individuals seeking recovery and stability: whether from physical and mental health challenges, substance use, homelessness, poverty, or the ongoing impacts of trauma and adversity. People who come through our doors are not expected to justify their circumstances, repeat their stories at every turn, or follow a linear path. Instead, They are welcomed into a supportive environment where their strengths are honoured, their goals are centred, and care adapts to their needs.
The Impact of Community Centred Care
CUPS participants experience stronger relationships, improved access to health and social supports, and increased stability in their housing, health, and family life. Community Health Centres like CUPS also reduce pressure on emergency systems by providing early, coordinated, and preventive support that reflects the realities of people’s lives and adapts to their changing needs.
CUPS is proud to be part of a provincial and national effort to strengthen primary health care through team-based, community-led, and prevention-focused service delivery that is equitable, accessible, and rooted in the needs of those it serves.