Open AccessNon-Official Language Concordance in Urban Canadian Medical Practice: Implications for Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Author(s) -
Ruolz Ariste,
Livio Di Matteo
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
healthcare policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.391
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 1715-6580
pISSN - 1715-6572
DOI - 10.12927/hcpol.2021.26497
Subject(s) - health care , pandemic , concordance , enabling , ethnic group , covid-19 , official language , population , spoken language , political science , medicine , family medicine , demography , sociology , linguistics , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty) , law , philosophy , psychiatry
Language barriers can reduce access to medical and virtual care. Although the topic of healthcare professionals and linguistic minorities has been studied in Canada, it has mainly been done for official languages (i.e., English and French). Non-official languages (NOLs) have not been explored previously in the healthcare system at the pan-Canadian level. The objective of this study is to determine to what extent NOLs spoken by physicians relate to those of Canadian ethnic groups and are an enabler of access to care. Using data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and Statistics Canada, we found an imbalance in the physician-to-population NOL ratios in Montreal and, to a lesser extent, Vancouver.