Making Health Easier: 65 Dundas welcomes the newest Our Healthbox
At Dixon Hall, we are always striving to better serve our community. This latest initiative, the Our Healthbox at 65 Dundas Street East, is a major step forward in ensuring accessible, judgment-free health care for our tenants.
Our Healthbox is a “smart” vending machine stocked with harm reduction supplies, HIV self-test kits, and sexual health products, and other wellness supplies offering tenants easy and private access to essential health tools—right where they live.
For many, accessing harm reduction supplies is challenging due to stigma, distance, or other barriers. Our Healthbox provides a simple solution: clean needles, naloxone, and HIV test kits available right in the building.
“Our Healthbox is a huge step forward in ensuring our community members have what they need to protect their health. It’s about giving people control over their well-being in a way that’s easy and accessible,” said Mina Mawani, CEO of Dixon Hall at 65 Dundas Street East.
Dixon Hall supports at-risk youth, seniors, adults with physical and mental health disabilities, individuals experiencing housing insecurity, job seekers, and newly immigrated individuals and their families. The Dixon Hall housing team, led by Haydar Shouly, shares this excitement about the positive impact on our community.
“The Healthbox at 65 Dundas Street provides low-barrier access to vital resources, offering pragmatic solutions to reach the undiagnosed, expand testing, strengthen care connections, and improve access to essential health options for our tenants' well-being,” said Shouly.
Beyond supplies, the Healthbox also provides health information and a directory of support services, ensuring that people can easily find the care they need. Rather than replacing existing health services, the Healthbox complements them, making health tools more accessible—without stigma or judgment.
A Research-Backed Initiative
The Our Healthbox program was first launched in January 2023 by Dr. Sean B. Rourke, a scientist at the MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, a world-leading research hub at St. Michael’s Hospital (Unity Health Toronto).
Since then, Our Healthboxes have expanded to 13 communities across Canada, with over 118,000 visits and 48,000 harm reduction, sexual health, and wellness supplies dispensed—including over 2,100 naloxone kits and more than 1,100 HIV self-test kits.
Now, with the launch of the Healthbox at 65 Dundas Street, this life-saving initiative continues to grow at a time when Canada is facing a worsening HIV epidemic and an opioid crisis that now claims 21 lives every day.
“Our Healthboxes have improved the health of individuals, families, and communities across Canada,” said Dr. Rourke, who also directs REACH Nexus, a national research group focused on addressing access and treatment for HIV, Hepatitis C, and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections.
“It’s essential for everyone to have these supplies to take care of their health, but we know this isn’t always happening. We are doing everything we can to close these health care gaps.”
As we welcome Our Healthbox to 65 Dundas Street, we remain committed to making health care more accessible, breaking down barriers, and ensuring that no one is left behind.
