Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Socioeconomic status plays a significant role in affecting a person's health. Those with low socio-economic status (SES), that is, individuals with low income and/or low educational attainment, face barriers in accessing health care in a timely and appropriate manner. They are at increased risk of death and of suffering from complications of chronic diseases compared to well educated high income individuals, even in the Canadian universal health care system. Why these barriers are greater for low SES individuals compared with high SES individuals remains unclear. Possible mechanisms may be related to transportation issues, financial difficulties in affording services that are not covered by public insurance such as medications, different attitudes and level of trust in the health care system, difficulty in understanding and applying health information to make appropriate health related decisions, and clinical factors. Our study aims to the describe these possible mechanisms in low SES patients with poor outcomes and to explore both individual associations and the interplay of these mechanisms on health outcomes. By understanding why low SES patients fail to achieve the level of health that high SES patients do, we hope to inform future policy that can modify the root causes of the barriers to health care access, to hopefully improve outcomes in this group and strive for a more equitable future.