Grant: Project Grant

Canada welcomes more immigrants and refugees than almost any other country in the world. But we still do not know enough about how well our health system is serving these newcomers. We cannot yet answer basic questions like: how often do refugees versus economic immigrants end up in the hospital or emergency room? Which provinces and cities do a better job of keeping newcomers healthy? And what specific health services make the biggest difference? This four-year project will answer those questions for the first time. Using national data that links immigration records to health records, our team will study hundreds of thousands of newcomers who arrived in Canada between 2015 and 2023. We will look at how often they needed urgent or hospital care, what health conditions were most common, costly, or preventable, and whether certain types of health services led to better outcomes. We will then compare results across 55 cities and all provinces to figure out what kinds of health system supports actually work - and which gaps need to be fixed. We will use both traditional research methods and newer artificial intelligence tools to find patterns and identify groups who may need extra support, such as children, mothers, or people with specific health conditions. To make sure our findings are useful in the real world, we will work directly with patients, health care providers, and government decision-makers throughout the project. Together, we will co-design an easy-to-use online dashboard that presents results clearly for each of these different audiences, alongside plain-language policy briefs. With more than 123 million people forcibly displaced around the world, understanding how to better support newcomer health has never been more urgent. This project will help Canada close a major gap in health knowledge, improve care for some of our most vulnerable residents, and position Canada as a global leader in newcomer-responsive health systems.