When the COVID-19 pandemic began, crip, disabled, and chronically ill communities, especially those of us who are queer, trans, non-binary, BIPOC, immigrants, and/or low-income knew we’d be among those most impacted and that our essential healthcare needs — which the Medical Industrial Complex was already epically failing to meet pre-pandemic — would be even harder to access.
Health Justice Commons took immediate action to ensure our communities’ survival and united to create the Radical Telehealth Collective. The RTC is a collective of rad frontline healthcare providers, rad crips, disability justice organizers, and Health Justice Commons members uniting to create free, accessible, and multilingual urgent and essential care and access during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Our virtual clinics are real-world liberated zones. We don’t have “patients” — a term which reinforces the oppressive power structures of the Medical Industrial Complex. Instead, RTC healthcare providers deliver care in the ways they’ve dreamed of but have been prevented by the Medical Industrial Complex: with respect, compassion, humility; honoring the autonomy, wisdom, and dignity of the person with whom they are working. In our sessions of 20-30 minutes, we can provide services such as:
The RTC model is grounded in disability justice and intersectional health justice principles and practices. We center access and offer multilingual interpretation and translation, live closed captioning, and ASL.
By providing these services through teleconference, we aim to connect those members of our communities most impacted by social oppression, environmental racism, healthcare exclusions, or most vulnerable and unable to access care in the traditional models of the Medical Industrial Complex. We’ll learn as we go, allowing the communities we center to lead.