Tag: healthcare

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Let’s Get Screened

Acknowledging that there tare cultural narratives around sex is critical

Creator:
Aysan Dehghani (she/hers)

One of the most important public health issues facing a country with a significant immigrant population is addressing sexual health among immigrant women, particularly those from more sexually conservative cultures. Such cultural conservatism, and an overarching cultural environment that treats public health in a culture-blind way, create access barriers for such immigrant women. This severely jeopardizes their sexual health specifically, and overall health more generally. Many cultures within Asian cultural spheres embody such forms of conservatism, which poses challenges for immigrant women from those cultures to have sufficient agency over their own health, especially when cultural perspectives significantly overlap with religious perspectives. Aysan takes on the specific issue of cervical screening and increasing health challenges facing Asian immigrant women in Canada by examining the cultural factors at play. If you were a medical healthcare worker, how might you try to help such patients address their concerns so they can have greater agency over their own health?

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How can I learn in a world of color when the text is white?

[H]ealthcare inequities…can be traced back to…the foundational knowledge that future healthcare practitioners are educated on.

Creator:
Ying Jie Li 李颖杰 (she/her)

Guest:
Melody (Chinese heritage, nursing student)

It would be so easy for us to think about health inequities as something situated within clinics and hospitals, especially in terms of the health outcomes. While that is a valid assessment of health inequities, there is much more to these issues. Who are the academics/physicians producing and publishing knowledge? Who are primarily the participants in these medical studies? What demographics is published knowledge based on? What are the identities, perspectives, and experiences of the people serving as frontline medical caregivers? Who are the people who make policy decisions in clinics, hospitals, and government ministries? All of these questions, and many others, colour the health inequities that patients experience. How do we address inequities within the healthcare system when these issues are so systemic? Listen to Ying Jie and her guest tackle these difficult issues, what these issues feel like, and think of what a way forward might look like.


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Can’t Use What’s Not There

Can’t Use What’s Not There

Creator:
Ghoncheh Eijadi

When we think about racialized or diasporic individuals establishing a livelihood in Canada, the prototypical conceptualization is an immigrant; but there are many others who do not fall into that group despite also trying to establish a livelihood here. This includes refugees, who often have very different experiences and are subject to very different obstacles from immigrants. Discussions around diasporic health, then needs to include this as well. From this perspective, Ghoncheh writes about IRER groups (Immigrants, Refugees, Ethno-Cultural, and Racialized) and their need for better and more culturally appropriate mental health support. In particular, Ghoncheh tries to outline the issues regarding the underutilization of mental health services among IRER groups, and lays out policy recommendations for how to rectify this issue.

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When What’s Available Isn’t Enough

This population of millions in Canada needs immediate attention with culturally-adept solutions to improve their mental health

Creator:
Harleen Kaur Hundal

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated families around the world; but such effects have disproportionately hit certain populations more than others. Internationally, this in differences can be seen in infection/hospitalization/fatality rates across the world. Nationally, this disparity across various social lines, most prominently based on ethnicity. As COVID-19 swept across Canada, each province and territory had to figure out how to best manage this virus, often shutting down who sectors of economic activity while relying on those performing essential services to keep the world running. Unfortunately, zooming into Greater Vancouver, many essential services are visibly and disproportionately reliant on racialized folks, whether this include grocery store workers, truckers, healthcare providers, laundry service providers, meat works, or many others. This places racialized folks at a much greater risk of becoming infected with, or dying from, COVID-19 – including South Asian diaspora. Read Harleen’s impassioned letter to her Member of Parliament, Hon. Carla Qualtrough, as she dissects the racialized impact of the pandemic, and what needs to be done to help the South Asian diasporic community. So what can be done beyond the generic colour-blind health interventions that are already available?

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Culturally sensitive public health care?

[T]hey have bad experience. They feel misunderstood, they feel unheard.

Author:
Ramit Seth रमित सेठ | ਰਮਿਤ ਸੇਠ

“Canada” is a place that consists of numerous cultural groups existing together; but this cultural mixing is also associated with numerous inequities that relate to economic and social power, amongst others. One of the most important challenges that such inequities pose is to figure out how to equitably provide health care to different cultural groups. Access to appropriate health care can be hampered by various factors, including time availability, proximity to transit, language barriers, and cultural misunderstandings. Without ensuring that everyone can have equitable access to good health care, we will always see health disparities between cultural groups emerge. How should we think about some of these issues plaguing the health care system, and what can be done to try to address these issues?

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Suck on an egg

I think the Western system can go and suck on an egg

Host:
Sameen Niazi ثمين نیازی (she/hers)

Guests:
Nami Azizi نامى ءزيزي (Afghan heritage, medical laboratory assistant)
Charmain Laride (Filipina-Latinx heritage, doula)
Dr. Nazia Niazi نازیہ نیازی (Pakistani heritage, family physician)

In this podcast submission, Niazi interviews three Asian Canadians who interface with various facets of the medical system in Canada. They all express different levels of frustration in their experiences with the Canadian medical system, centring on their identities as Asian diaspora in Canada. The guests speak of systemic issues like the lack of language-accessible services, insufficient representation of diverse cultural identities in childbirth support service providers (e.g. midwives and doulas), and the problematic stereotypes and cultural assumptions healthcare providers have that are harmful for racialized communities. Niazi and her guests also talk about the difficulties of discussing about racism in Canada when the predominant conceptualization of racism requires that it be clear and explicit, making more implicit behaviours like biases and microagressions more difficult to critique despite the negative impact they have on the receiver. What steps are needed to tackle the racism and discrimination that’s built into the healthcare system in Canada?

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