Grant: CIHR Fellowship

Cardiovascular disease is the second leading cause of death and a leading cause of hospitalization in Canada. Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is a self-management program that helps reduce heart attacks, hospitalization, and death. Important inequities persist in the access to CR across Canada, particularly among people from linguistic and cultural minorities who are less likely to be referred to and enroll into these programs. Our health system needs solutions to better support the cardiovascular health of equity-deserving groups in Canada. The goal of this postdoctoral research project is to determine how best to increase the participation of people from linguistic and cultural minorities in CR in Canada. Specifically, we will: 1) identify barriers and enablers to accessing CR services among linguistic and cultural minority groups; 2) co-design a culturally competent intervention to support CR participation along with patients, their families and CR health care providers and; 3) pilot the co-designed intervention within the University of Ottawa Heart Institute to assess whether it is feasible (can it be done?), acceptable (does it make sense?) and implementable (how can it be adopted within our existing health care system?). We will work with patients of South Asian, Black/African/Caribbean, and Chinese backgrounds for this initial project, and plan to expand this work to other groups in the future. We will share decision making power with patients and key stakeholders during all research phases. We will use innovative methods from implementation science to ensure that the intervention will be relevant to the needs of patients and providers, while also accounting for the realities of how CR is currently structured and funded in Canada. This research will help improve the cardiovascular health of linguistic and cultural minorities by increasing the availability of equitable, culturally responsive, and evidence-based cardiovascular health care services in Canada.