The City of Calgary report entitled Indices of Community Well-being for Calgary Community Districts (The City of Calgary Community Vitality and Protection Community Strategies Policy and Planning Division, 2000). In this report, the statistics regarding the economic and social well being of Calgarians lends support to the need for a mobile health unit. The report notes the following:

• 43.1% of families in Calgary are below the housing affordability threshold
• 37.8% of Calgarians live in tenant occupied households spending >30% of their income on shelter costs
• 21.1% of families are headed by a lone parents
• 20.6% of Calgarians live in a low income household
• 27.0% of Calgarians have not completed high school
• 30.9% of seniors are receiving Old Age Security
• 28.3% of seniors live alone

Through a donation from the Calgary Community Lottery Board, The Alex developed and purchased the mobile health unit of its kind on the Prairies.

The Health Bus was developed in response to an identified need for enhanced accessibility to health care services. An objective is increased physical, social and psychological well-being. The flexibility inherent in the Community Health Bus means that services can be delivered in areas where these people work and reside on a non-traditional schedule (i.e. 1 - 9 pm).

For Calgary's working poor, who constitutes fifteen percent (15%) of all employed Calgarians, being able to schedule work so that they can take themselves and/or their family members to visit a medical professional is not possible. Medical visits tend to be episodic and infrequent. By providing a large range of services, the Health Bus will be able to that will ultimately enhance the quality of lives of the targeted population.

During the first year of operation we projected 1,600 client contacts (actual number of services over 3,600).

The goals of the Health Bus include:

• To be a bold, innovative, and cost-effective solution to providing a greater accessibility to a wide range of on-site and on-going preventative medical services and supports;
• To create addition capacity for a health care system that is beyond its ability to meet everyone's needs and to keep individuals from becoming further marginalized;
• To build community partnerships to meet the needs of medically and socially complex individuals who are marginalized and not receiving adequate health care services;
• To generate statistics that will be invaluable when planning to meet community needs;
• To show the benefits a Community Health Bus affords with following at-risk population movements without the high costs of setting up fixed health centres.