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In 2006, the WRHI moved its National Office to Hillbrow in the Inner City of Johannesburg, where offices, research space for clinical trials, a major training centre and a community care centre have been established. The presence of WRHI in this hub is the basis for the development of the Hillbrow Health Precinct, which is an innovative and inspiring inner city regeneration programme which WRHI has developed with a mandate from Wits University.
The Hillbrow Health Precinct is an inner city regeneration project that was conceived by the WRHI in 2000, and since 2002, the unit has driven this project with a mandate from Wits University, in partnership with the Gauteng Province and the City of Johannesburg. This one of a kind project has become a flagship for Wits which has the potential to demonstrate the university’s ability to have an academic presence that interfaces strongly with the local community. The university has recognised the precinct as an integral part of its spatial planning initiative.
The Hillbrow Health Precinct has been identified as a foyer within the Wits Spatial Plan, and is now identified as part of the academic arc that links all Wits’s campuses from Braamfontein, through the precinct to the Parktown campus. With this in mind opportunities have been identified by other departments and faculties to engage in service learning, student projects and research from this base. Early negotiations are underway to secure additional student accommodation in the precinct. The Wits student voluntary body is already active in the Health Precinct and there is enthusiasm to expand this role in the inner city through expanded partnerships with Non-Governmental and Community Based Organisations.
The vision for the Hillbrow Health Precinct is to create a visionary world-first Health Precinct addressing HIV, poverty and urban renewal in Johannesburg’s inner city, which delivers outstanding health services and health care worker training, develops best practice models and world class research, all of which are relevant to South Africa and to the African continent.
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