Future of immigrant and refugee health

Canada faces various future challenges in its healthcare system, such as an aging population of baby boomers, a high influx of incoming immigrants/refugees, and inequity in health access in rural communities.

Given the projected growth of newcomers to Canada, up to 450,000, including refugees and immigrants, are expected to arrive annually by 2025. (Statistics Canada Immigration and Ethnocultural Diversity, 2016). Soon, Immigrants to Canada will increase from 7.5 million to more than 12 million by 2036, contributing to almost 30% of the Canadian population. (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 2017). An increasingly culturally diverse population poses a future challenge with various healthcare needs across communities.

At this current rate, the Canadian healthcare system is expected to be overwhelmed by a lack of human resources, healthcare equipment such as CT scans and MRI machines, and sustaining equitable healthcare accessibility across the country.

Most importantly, the quality of health services is up to debate to combat increasing needs, especially to strike a balance between Canadian-born and immigrants in a culturally-diverse perspective. Do you think that healthcare workers are equipped with adequate cultural-competency knowledge and training to assist these newcomers?

From a political perspective, liberals and conservatives have taken different approaches to Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) whenever they are elected to the federal government. The IFHP provides federally funded healthcare coverage for refugees until they gain access to provincially funded health insurance. (Holtzer, E., 2017) Historically, the conservative party has cut the IFHP’s budget targeted to refugees, as happened in 2012, for many reasons. The Liberal government then restored it in 2016.

Newcomers arriving in Canada often face numerous barriers in accessing healthcare.

Ozcurumez et al. (2012) show that the most common barriers to newcomers’ accessing health care have included the following:

• Newcomers lack knowledge about the healthcare system

• Location of services too far from newcomer neighborhood

• The inappropriate fit of planned services with newcomer needs

• Health services, information, and signage not in newcomer languages

• Healthcare workers’ limited experience with migration-related trauma

We all must have heard about the situation in Ukraine, where many Ukrainians were displaced and are expected to arrive in Canada in large numbers in a short period. The real question is, is the Canadian healthcare system ready to take them in and ensure fair health equity amongst newly arriving incomers?