SHE Clinic
Safe, Healthy, Empowered Clinic
WEDNESDAYS 11A-2P
The SHE Clinic is a program of Aurora Commons made possible through a partnership with Harborview who provides the medical care, and is supported by the Department of Health, the City of Seattle, and Pacific Hospital Preservation and Development Authority. At SHE Clinic, we believe everybody needs to be reminded of their goodness. That’s why our purpose is to provide kind, quality, non-judgmental health care to women on Aurora Avenue—to remind them that they are good through helping them care for their bodies.
Everything we do is driven by the women we serve. We empower them to define what they need, and then we provide a beautiful, safe, trauma-informed space to meet those needs. Our roster of trusting female-identified providers empathize with the fear and shame that’s often felt by the women at the Commons, and aim to create a community that helps heal those feelings.
Dr. Shireesha Dhanireddy, photo by Grace Beck.
Clinical Services:
- Facilitating enrollment in insurance and registration at UWM
- Family planning and contraceptive services
- Wound Care and abscess drainage
- Labs and imaging
- Foot washing
- Medication management for chronic medical conditions such as Hypertension and Diabetes
- Vaccines
- Sexually Transmitted Infection testing - Chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis
- HIV and viral hepatitis screening
- Hepatitis C treatment
- HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)
- Referrals to detox, treatment and housing
- Low barrier Buprenorphine, Medicated Assisted Treatment for those with opiate use disorder
- Pre-Natal Care
SHE Clinic Story:
Since Aurora Commons opened in 2011 we have been able to build relationships with hundreds of female identified sex workers who are involved in street based sex work (SBSW) on North Aurora Avenue. We have learned from them that homelessness, poverty, drug dependence, and violent victimization create the need for a variety of health and social services, yet simultaneously serve as barriers to female identified street based sex workers accessing these very services. Barriers include both structural and process factors (e.g.,travel costs, office hours, social stigma) and individual social and clinical factors (e.g.,drug use, mental stability, lack of trust and fear in the traditional healthcare system).
As we continued to witness both the need and barriers to healthcare we began to leverage our relationships at the Commons by directly involving the women in the development and implementation of what we now call the SHE Clinic. SHE Clinic opened in July 2018 and provides a crucial link between UW Harborview Medical Center, Puget Sound Christian Medical Clinic’s (PSCC) mobile healthcare clinic and the Aurora Commons through an innovative, accessible and non-judgmental health care delivery model that is overcoming these barriers.
