Health Equity is everyone’s business!
Anjum Sultana is Vice-Chair of the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA), Board Director with the Regent Park Community Health Centre, Strategic Advisor for the Student Run Clinic Association of Canada and Founder of Millennial Womxn in Policy.
As a policy professional with public health training, I see everyday how essential public policies are to creating a happier, healthier and more just society. This is especially true for equity-seeking populations such as women, newcomers and racialized communities.
That’s why it was so critical that the theme for CASSA’s 8th Annual Health Equity Summit this year was focused on Policy, Advocacy & Strategy.
It was an honour to open the Summit and frame the discussions for the day because achieving systemic change isn’t easy. It’s critical we think about the policy levers we want use to promote health and well-being for South Asian communities in Ontario and Canada more broadly. Several years ago, CASSA started on the path to develop a South Asian Health Strategy. In our current political environment, this Summit was an important opportunity to revisit that work and see ways we can move forward.
Over the course of 2 days and in collaboration with our partners, William Osler Health System and Ryerson University, participants were able to attend 12 panels, engage in a community consultation and connect with over 30 experts working in research, policy and service delivery. For the first time, in order to make our event more accessible, CASSA hosted the summit in both Brampton and Toronto. Special thank you to all of our partners and sponsors including Dr. Sepali Guruge, Professor and Chair of Urban Health Research at the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing for all of your support.
We had a jam-packed program and it was wonderful to have many partners of CASSA and friends in the sector share their expertise such as Haran Vijayanathan of Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention (ASAAP), Shermeen Farooqi of Public Health Agency of Canada, Dr. Lawrence Loh of Peel Public Health, Dr. Ananya Banerjee and Dr. Shafi Bhuiyan and from the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, Garima Talwar Kapoor from Maytree Foundation, Mariyam Lightwala of CAMH and Baldev Mutta of Punjabi Community Health Services just to name a few. We talked about health equity from an intersectional perspective — you can’t talk about racial/ethnic identity, without also talking about the cummulative disadvantage experienced due to age, gender, disability, sexual orientation, immigration status, and other aspects of one’s social location.
We had several thoughtful sessions throughout the summit and I wanted to share insights from two panels I had the privilege of attending yesterday.
In the morning, Tiyondah Fante-Coleman, Dalon Taylor and Nakia Lee-Foon of the Black Health Alliance shared their experience developing a Black Health and Well-Being Strategy and insights from their Pathways to Care project.
What was clear from the session was that in order to have a strategy that translates from words on a page to action in community, both data and mobilization are essential. Generating research evidence gets you in the door and helps to validate truths already known from community members’ lived experience. However, to actually see investments and dollars behind commitments, political participation and advocacy is necessary.
In the afternoon, for our panel on policy, we heard from Dr. Kofi Hope, Senior Policy Advisor at the Wellesley Institute and Samiya Abdi, Senior Program Consultant at Public Health Ontario. They shared their tips for making systemic change a reality through their work at policy-tables and with community-based organizations.
Disaggregated race-based and ethno-specific data is key. Unfortunately, the limited data and as well as the lack of clarity and consensus on data approaches makes it difficult to take stock of the full extent of racial health inequities in Canada. Take for example — the three largest racialized groups in Toronto — Chinese, South-Asian and Black communities. Each category looks at a different component of identity whether it be a nationality or linguistic group, a geographic region, or a racialized identity. The data standard (which currently uses the term visible minority) employed by Statistics Canada is not meeting the needs of racialized communities.
Fortunately, there are some promising practices that can be adopted to collect disaggregated data. For example, the Anti-Racism Directorate has created a data standard to ensure consistent collection, analysis and reporting of race-based data. Another effective approach was the one taken by Toronto Central Local Health Integration Network’s ‘We Ask Because We Care’ initiative to collect socio-demographic data collection in health care. Federally, the establishment of the Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics offers hope.
Samiya shared that in the current political environment, messaging of health equity needs to nuanced and responsive to the priorities of current governments such as talking about the economic viability and financial return on investment of health equity. However, at the end of the day, to have a prosperous society where people are thriving, we need to start thinking about how we can ensure equity is everyone’s business.
Both Dr. Hope and Samiya Abdi talked about the challenges faced when operationalizing policies that are often developed in the abstract with limited community input and consideration of front line service providers’ perspectives. To see material change on the ground that makes a real difference, it’s critical that meaningful engagement be built in from the beginning. Ultimately, to translate grassroots activism into government action, we need alignment and clarity on what success looks like and need action in multiple arenas simultaneously.
There were so many other insights from the day but this gives you a hint on the types of conversations we had throughout the Summit.
It was lovely to reconnect with many friends and colleagues in the health sector, including Gurneet Kaur Dhami, a Masters of Science candidate in Applied Nutrition, who I met earlier this year at a Millennial Womxn in Policy event I organized in Halifax.
Gurneet shared what inspired her the most from CASSA’s Health Equity Summit this year:
“I found the open conversations by all the speakers and attendees as a testament that we are ‘here’ and need to go ‘there’, and by over ‘there’ I mean the realm of policy with ‘ethno-specific race base data’ that is long overdue!”
For me in many ways, this summit was also a way to come full circle. One of my first jobs as an undergraduate student in Health Studies at the University of Toronto was working as a Coordinator for CASSA’s Annual Health Equity Summit. It’s great to see the policy dialogue the Summit has sparked and reminded me of the actions we still need to take in Ontario and Canada to make South Asian health a priority. South Asian Canadians are quickly becoming the largest racialized population in the country with significant health challenges and yet no government has implemented a South Asian Health Strategy to address the inequities faced by our communities. This Federal Election provides a key window of opportunity to call attention to this issue and make an impact. If you want to make a South Asian Health Strategy a reality, please reach out and let’s discuss ways we can collaborate.
Congratulations to the fantastic CASSA Staff led by Executive Director Samya Hasan for making this Summit a reality! Your hard work and dedication is very much appreciated by the community. Special thank you to Sharifa Kazi and Sophia Ayathurai who served as Health Equity Coordinators this year — you did great work continuing on the legacy!
