About the Commons
The Community Health Commons is a volunteer-run, non-profit, open source project in Regina, Saskatchewan. It exists because a large share of what people need from the health system is not clinical care: it's navigation, education, and knowing what exists nearby. Those are things volunteers can deliver safely, and that's exactly where we start.
Phased by design
Each phase is a gate, not a date. A phase launches only when its legal and operational preconditions are met, by recorded decision of the community board.
| Phase | Scope | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Navigation & knowledge | Resource map, prevention library, navigation warm line, open data. No accounts, no personal health information. | Building now |
| 2. Structured education | Workshops, prevention programs, and a professionally authored FAQ sourced from anonymized navigation topics. | Gated on editorial capacity |
| 3. Volunteer clinical services | Screening events and volunteer clinic shifts, where legally permitted. | Gated on legal review, insurance, credential verification |
Phase 3 does not begin until the platform carries its own liability insurance, verifies every credential against the relevant college registry (CPSS, SRNA, SCPP and counterparts) with scheduled re-verification, and completes a privacy review under Saskatchewan's Health Information Protection Act. If those bars can't be met, Phase 3 doesn't happen. Phases 1 and 2 are valuable on their own.
Editorial standard
Every prevention guide carries, visibly: the sources it draws on (Canadian public guidance preferred), who reviewed it, the date of review, and an expiry date. Content past its review date drops out of the library index automatically until re-reviewed, and the count of expired guides is published on the dashboard. Guides are general education only, never individualized advice.
At launch, guides are drafted from cited public guidelines and marked "professional review pending" until a licensed reviewer in the relevant discipline has signed off. We'd rather show that badge honestly than fake authority.
Governance
The Commons will be governed by a community board: healthcare professionals, community members, patients, technical contributors, and researchers. Board decisions are documented publicly in the project repository. The board is being seated during Phase 1 so it governs something real before the high-stakes decisions arrive. No corporate ownership of governance, ever.
Privacy
Phase 1 is architected to hold no personal health information at all: no public accounts, anonymized navigation logs (topic, outcome, time; nothing identifying), no stored questions attributable to a person. If later phases require collecting personal health information, a privacy impact assessment and HIPA legal review happen before collection begins, not after.
Open source
All code and data for this site are maintained in a public repository (being opened as the project stabilizes). Code is licensed AGPL-3.0; original content is CC BY-SA 4.0. Contributions, corrections, and forks for other cities are welcome; the long-term goal is a replicable kit any community can deploy after completing its own legal review.
Contact & corrections
Found a listing that's closed or wrong? A guide that's out of date? Email commons@felineunion.org. Corrections to the resource map are our highest-priority maintenance.
What this site is not
This is not a medical service. Nothing here is diagnosis, treatment, or individual medical advice. For health questions, start with a provider you trust or the community-run clinics on our map. For peer support with no police involvement, CMHA Regina runs peer-led programs weekdays at 1810 Albert Street (306-525-9543). This site's referrals are community-run or they are nothing; we do not route people into provincially run intake lines. Saskatchewan has no peer-run evening warm line; we name that gap rather than fill it with something it isn't. If a life is in danger right now, no website is the answer, this one included: close this page and get help from the people around you. This site deliberately contains no 911 referrals and no police-partnered services in its guidance; the full reasoning, with sources, is at Why We Won't Tell You to Call 911.