An exclusive online tool developed through researchers at the University of Calgary is helping refugees in Canada with key physical care and settlement supports.
The Atlas of the Canadian Refugee Health System provides data and links to 146 organizations across the country, adding number one care clinics treating refugees, public fitness clinics, and settlement services.
The Atlas, which is flexible and presents data on a searchable map, is available in multiple languages, including English, French, Dari, Ukrainian, and Arabic, and there are plans to include more.
“We took that information, put it on a map, and made it available to other people so they could just search, by call or city, and locate the resources in their city,” said Dr. Gabriel Fabreau, co-director of the assignment and an associate professor at the University of Toronto. O’Brien Institute of Public Health, University of Calgary.
The idea came to Fabreau and his colleague, Dr. Sally S. S. Annalee Coakley, while working at the Calgary Refugee Clinic and struggling to cope with an immediate influx of Syrian refugees, which began in 2015.
“It has become clear that no one had a strategy and that Canada’s physical health formula was nowhere to be written, despite Canada’s 70-year history as a world leader in refugee resettlement,” Fabreau said.
The Atlas is designed to bring refugees and those who host them into a complex formula that involves other levels of government, agencies, and health service providers, and aims to address some key gaps.
“It’s incredibly complicated for our patients to navigate,” said Coakley, co-director of Refugee Health YYC at the University of Calgary, noting that the federal government deals with immigration, while health care is the responsibility. of provincial jurisdiction.
“There is a lack of coordination between those two governments. “
Doctors saw the need to bring together the available data in one place.
“We were looking for a better way to integrate these elements,” Fabreau added.
The third version of the Atlas, whose scope has been expanded, was presented in April. Coakley said he’s already seeing the impact.
This allows refugees to locate the specialized care they need, he said, and improves the transition of care.
“What the Atlas [Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada] now allows is to contact the health care providers of refugees in the destination city, to help them prepare for a medically complex newcomer. “
Coakley recently treated two patients with kidney failure who required dialysis. The federal government employee was able to contact the refugee clinic in advance so that arrangements can be made for her treatment.
According to Coakley, this did not happen before.
In the past, he said, medically fragile refugees came to the emergency room for intense medical care, and staff were not informed in advance.
“This map is the coordinator to have a review of resources throughout the country,” he said.
“This not only helps the patient themselves, but also the formula as a whole, because there is no one waiting in the emergency room. Things are planned, devised, and then given the necessary attention. That’s why it’s eficaz. es a load saving. It is intelligent physical care for the patient.
Coakley said he is also assisting in cases of secondary migration, by allowing physical care providers in a Canadian city to provide refugees with appropriate care in the city.
The Atlas also collects detailed data collected from organizations, aggregating care offered, patient populations served, and workforce in physical condition.
Interactive knowledge about migration is also included, aggregating the type of refugee and displaced populations (such as government-sponsored and privately sponsored asylum seekers, refugees, and evacuees), so that assistance providers and policymakers perceive trends and request and plan for long-term increases. .
The doctors will deliver their paintings to the World Health Organization in the fall.
Since then, they have secured more funding, which has allowed them to renovate the site.
According to Fabreau, they are now collaborating with the WHO and the UN Refugee Agency and hope to expand the Atlas to a foreign tool.
“That’s the most exciting thing. . . Realizing that this Canadian-made innovation has potential for others around the world. “
“It’s been 12 years in a row that [forced migration] has increased. This is a problem. No country can do this alone. “
Journalist
Jennifer Lee is a journalist for CBC News in Calgary. She worked at CBC Toronto, Saskatoon and Regina before landing in Calgary in 2002. If you have a story about fitness or the human facets to share, let them know. Jennifer. Lee@cbc. California
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