The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) released a report in November outlining recommendations on how to reduce health inequalities in Canada. The CIHI report suggests that “universal access to essential health care does not, alone, reduce health inequalities.”
Instead, the report calls for more specific measures:
- Continue to identify, monitor and report on inequalities at different levels of geography to identify priority areas for action.
- Conduct research on exceptions to the norm in order to understand why some groups and communities with similar economic and material conditions have lower levels of inequalities than others.
- Design interventions with robust evaluations built in, and disseminate the evidence across jurisdictions.
- Encourage discussion at the national, provincial and community levels to bring the evidence on health inequalities to health planners and community leaders.
- Identify and learn from best practices.
Please read the report on the CIHI website.