Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

Deprivation is a widely used measure to assess health equity. Traditionally, deprivation indices integrate various socioeconomic variables into one value. They support research in equity, diversity and inclusion. Canadian researchers have been creating first-generation deprivation indices from aggregated Census data for the past 20 years. Second-generation deprivation indices, first developed in the UK, add information about barriers to housing (overcrowding, affordability), services (distance in meters and minutes), living environment (cancer incidence, preventable death ratio), physical environment (air quality, flood risk, distance to industrial sites, road traffic collisions) and community safety (crime, theft, burglary, fires). These domains can be viewed as an environmental dimension. They require the inclusion of supplementary data sources from provincial or municipal institutions (eg. addresses). Developing such multidimensional deprivation indices for Canada requires the collaboration of representatives from all provinces in the sourcing, access, transformation and sharing of the data. Augmenting the datasets used in the making of these indices with routinely collected administrative data will result in a more up-to-date and relevant tool for health equity analysis in urban and rural areas. To scope interests for new Canadian deprivation indices, we have invited researchers from across the country with expertise in the application and creation of such tools, to take part in a meeting in Montreal in April 2020. Discussions around feasibility, data availability, and sustainability will be key components of the meeting. Presentation of Quebec's prototype of multidimensional deprivation indices will initiate discussions and planning. The meeting provides a platform to create a working group to collaborate in drafting a joint grant proposal in support of Canadian second-generation deprivation indices, to be submitted to the next CIHR project grants competition.