This provides basic data and links to further evidence on the nature of existing health disparities in Ontario. A great deal of data from the excellent POWER reports is broken down by individual LHIN.
How To Analyze the Social Determinants of Health Inequality
The roots of health disparities lie in wider structures of social and economic inequality – in the underlying social determinants of health. Understanding this wider context is vital to grounding action within the health care system. Wellesley has published a range of policy papers and research reports on this.
These social determinants do not operate in isolation but are very much inter-connected in individuals’ lives and in their system impacts. Similarly, they interact with each other and with wider social, economic and cultural forces in a constantly changing and dynamic way.
Nowhere is this inter-dependence – sometimes called inter-sectionality — clearer than for gender. While women face systemic differences in the underlying determinants of health, access to services and overall health status, all women are not the same. Low-income and/or racialized women face specific additional cumulative and interdependent inequalities. The women’s’ health movement, researchers and public agencies have developed gender-based analsysis and other essential tools to help address these disparities. ECHO: Improving Women’s’ Health In Ontario is a key starting point.