Toronto Public Library and UHN launch mobile clinic at branches
toronto public library and the University Health Network have put mobile health clinics outside library branches to bring primary care to vulnerable people. The first clinic is operating outside the Sanderson TPL branch near Dundas and Bathurst, where staff can see patients who may have trouble getting care elsewhere.
The clinics provide full physical exams, blood pressure checks, cancer care, chronic disease screening and mental health counselling. Health-care workers can also treat abscesses and infections, teach overdose response, hand out Naloxone and prescribe opioids such as methadone to help people get off street drugs.
Dr. Andrew Boozary on libraries
Dr. Andrew Boozary, a physician, researcher and founding executive director of the Gattuso Centre for Social Medicine at UHN, said the partnership was logical because libraries are already places of refuge
for vulnerable people. He said, This is part of that response to reach people who really need these supports and to ensure that it’s not resulting in worse health outcomes or visits to emergency departments that could have been preventable
.
The clinics are separate from supervised consumption sites and are not a replacement for them. Drug use and drug testing are not allowed on site, and sterile pipes and needles will not be handed out. That limits the service to health care and harm-reduction support that can be delivered without turning the library locations into consumption sites.
June 13 closures
The launch comes as two supervised consumption sites in Toronto are scheduled to close on June 13, after five consumption sites have already closed since March 2025. Three privately funded supervised consumption sites still remain in Toronto, and the mobile clinic project is being rolled out while that network is shrinking.
For people who need care, the practical change is simple: the library stop is now a place to look for an exam, screening, counselling or treatment for an infection, not only a book or a computer. There is currently only one mobile health clinic in operation, so access will depend on where and when that unit is deployed.
