A team of more than 60 researchers working on the “Project for an Ontario Women’s Health Evidence-Based Report” (POWER) has released its final chapter of findings. The completed “Women’s Health Report” will serve as an evidence-based tool for policy makers, providers, and consumers to improve health and reduce health inequities among Ontario’s women.
The final chapter “Achieving Health Equity in Ontario: Opportunities for Intervention and Improvement” describes patterns of differences in health and health care associated with gender, income, education, age, race/ethnicity, immigration status, and geography. It explains how these differences can be reduced using evidence from earlier chapters and reviews major findings from every chapter.
Findings from this chapter of the study include:
- Inequities in health and functional status were larger than inequities in access to care or quality of care
- Inequities in access were more apparent at the level of primary health care
- Inequities are few when program evaluation includes performance measurement and quality improvement strategies
- Gender-sensitive solutions are required
The chapter introduces the POWER Study’s “Leading Set of Health Equity Indicators,” a tool to incorporate gender and equity analysis into health indicator monitoring. This is followed by a section on data development which provides suggestions on how to gather data that was lacking in the report. The “POWER Health Equity Road Map” is a ten-point plan to achieve health equity in Ontario.
See the POWER Study chapter “Achieving Health Equity in Ontario,” atwww.powerstudy.ca.