Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Policy contexts at different levels shape health inequities, and responses to them. Within Canada and globally, Indigenous peoples and other excluded sub-populations (based on intersecting race; sex, gender, and sexual orientation; age; religion; language; migration status; socioeconomic status; disability; geographical location, etc.), experience higher disease burden than the general population, and are often underserved. Canadian health systems have an imperative to reduce health inequities within the context of global and national policy commitments. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) created the Health System Impact (HSI) Fellowship to prepare fellows to address critical health system challenges, including reducing health inequities. Members of a newly formed Health Equity Working Group, comprised of a subset of CIHR HSI Fellows, will share: the policy context for their jurisdiction and work; definition(s) of health equity used in their policy context and work; implementation of health equity in their research (e.g. research team, objectives, design, and methods); knowledge transfer and exchange to inform policy change, and program planning, development, and implementation; and anticipated impact on health equity. The panelists represent different Canadian provinces, disciplines, and career/fellowship stages; work at a range of health system levels (global, national, provincial/territorial, regional); and focus on diverse subpopulations (Indigenous peoples, immigrants and refugees, racialized groups, people in urban, Northern, rural and remote regions, etc.). The moderator, who is a past CIHR HSI Fellow currently working at a national level within a health-related not-for-profit organization, will pose questions to panelists regarding research and policy to reduce health inequities within Canada.