Grant: Science Policy Fellowships

In order to appropriately plan for health care services in rural settings and meet the objectives of the Ministry's Innovation and Change Agenda, it is important for Interior Health, as a mixed urban-rural-remote health authority, to understand if patients with similar health needs, irrespective of where they live, are receiving same or similar services. Rural communities face unique challenges that impact quality of life and produce significant discrepancies in health. Examples of such factors in rural-remote communities include lower socio-economic status, decreased rates of high school graduation and college/university completion, and limited health care access. Equity of access to publicly funded health services is a foundational value that guides how services are planned, administered, and delivered in Canada in accordance with provincial and federal legislation. Within Interior Health, planning for service delivery is similarly guided by this principle of equity of opportunity to access services. This policy challenge is complicated by the complexity and nature of maintaining practice competency, building professional networks, and distributing professional capacity across rural, remote, and urban communities. Access to these services is not always reasonably equitable between urban and rural settings. The policy challenge is: how do we as a health system ensure reasonable, equitable access to services across this vast geography within a constrained fiscal environment? More specifically, what models for health services delivery are demonstrating success at balancing equity in access and financial feasibility in rural and remote health systems? What strategies are demonstrating promise in response to rural/remote human health services challenges?