Collect Race, Indigenous Identity On Health Card Renewal To Address Health Inequities, Study Suggests

To address the health disparities that Indigenous and racialized patients may encounter, data on racial and Indigenous identity should be collected when applying for and updating health care cards, suggested a group of authors in the Canadian Medical Association Journal .

While race is a social construct that uses perceived physical differences to create and maintain power differentials, and the existence of different racial groups has not been proven to have a biological basis, perceived race affects how people are treated by individuals and the institutions. are treated", he wrote to Dr. Andrew Pinto, founder of the Upstream Lab at the MAP Center for Urban Health Solutions, part of the Unity Health Toronto hospital network, with co-authors.

Indigenous and black patients have less access to health care, receive worse care and have worse outcomes.

"The availability of race-based data for analysis can facilitate the measurement of racial disparities in health care, help hold organizations and governments accountable for addressing these disparities, and monitor progress," the authors write.

Collecting self-reported identity data from health card applications and updates can be an effective way to obtain this information, with caveats to plan ahead and prevent potential collection losses. The authors suggest the following:

• Ask questions about race and Indigenous identity in a safe and transparent way
• Protect yourself from potential racist bias or corrections by providing anti-racism training
• Make sure racial or ethnic identity is not visible on the health card
• Ensure that data is not interpreted or presented in a way that reinforces racism and discrimination
• Enact public protection laws to prevent the use of health data to draw broad conclusions about communities
• Enable Indigenous, Black and Race-motivated communities to advance data collection and analysis with data sovereignty and governance frameworks

"Racism in Canada's health care system continues to fuel injustice, but data that would help monitor progress and ensure accountability is missing or insufficient." all Canadian jurisdictions are effectively covered. ' concluded the authors.

For more information: Andrew Pinto et al., Considerations for collecting data on race and Indigenous identity during health card renewal in Canadian jurisdictions, Journal of the Canadian Medical Association (2023). DOI: 10.1503/cmaj.221587

Citation : Gathering Race, Indigenous Identity in Health Card Renewal to Address Health Inequities, Study Proposal (2023 June 26) Accessed July 1, 2023 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-06-indigenous-identity- health- map extension .html

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