Teaching poverty and health: importing transformative learning into the structures and paradigms of medical education.

Background: As a paradigm of education that emphasizes equity and social justice, transformative education aims to improve societal structures by inspiring learners to become agents of social change. In an attempt to contribute to transformative education, the University of Toronto MD program implemented a workshop on poverty and health that included tutors with lived experience of poverty. This research aimed to examine how tutors, as members of a group that faces structural oppression, understood their participation in the workshop.

Immigration Status as the Foundational Determinant of Health for People Without Status in Canada: A Scoping Review.

Migration is increasing at unprecedented rates worldwide, but inadequate mechanisms for granting citizenship or permanent residence have rendered many immigrants without legal status. We study the health of people without immigration status in Canada, building on a 2010 review on being without status and health. We employ an expanded definition of health, guided by the WHO Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) framework.

Caring for patients with lived experience of homelessness.

Objective: To guide family physicians working in a range of primary care clinical settings on how to provide care and support for patients who are vulnerably housed or experiencing homelessness.

Sources Of Information: The approach integrates recommendations from evidence-based clinical guidelines, the views of persons with lived experience of homelessness, the theoretical tenets of the Patient's Medical Home framework, and practical lessons learned from family physicians working in a variety of clinical practice settings.

Main Message: Family physicians can use simple and effective approaches to identify patients who are homeless or vulnerably housed; take initial steps to initiate access to housing, income assistance, case management, and treatment for substance use; and work collaboratively using trauma-informed and anti-oppressive approaches to better assist individuals with health and social needs.

Implementation and impact of an online tool used in primary care to improve access to financial benefits for patients: a study protocol.

Objectives: Addressing the social determinants of health has been identified as crucial to reducing health inequities. However, few evidence-based interventions exist. This study emerges from an ongoing collaboration between physicians, researchers and a financial literacy organisation.

Waiting for care: effects of Ontario's 3-month waiting period for OHIP on landed immigrants.

Objective: To describe the experiences of a group of new immigrants and caregivers of new immigrants who were subject to the 3-month waiting period for the Ontario Health Insurance Plan and needed to access health care services during that time.

Design: Qualitative study using a phenomenologic framework.

Setting: Participants were recruited through the Scarborough Community Volunteer Clinic in Toronto, Ont.