Established in 2019, the Research Chair aims to consolidate the knowledge base identifying the living conditions of francophones in minority situations, their health status, their experience with services and linguistic barriers, and the organizational capacity to offer services in French. The research program will make it possible to better target the socio-territorial inequalities in health; determine the service needs essential to maintaining the vitality of the Francophone community; identify vulnerable sup-groups; estimate and improve the capacity of health systems to meet the needs of these populations; document the impacts of linguistic discordance on the quality and safety of care; anchor research on these issues and support the training of the next generation of researchers on the health of francophones in minority situations.
The Co-Chairs
Louise Bouchard is a professor at the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies and co-chair of the University of Ottawa/Institut du Savoir Montfort Joint Chair on the Health of Francophones in Ontario. She has contributed to the development of a pioneering research program on health in official language minority settings. With her colleague Anne Leis from the University of Saskatchewan, she has received an important grant from the CIHR for the development of research abilities and established the Réseau interdisciplinaire de recherche sur la santé des francophones (RISF) (CIHR 2006-2011) for the study of socio-environmental, cultural and structural factors that influence health disparities among francophones in minority situations. From 2009 to 2014, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) gave her a research fund for the development of the Réseau de recherche appliquée sur la santé les francophones de l’Ontario. In 2014, the MOHLTC allocated a supplementary fund to develop a Geoportal on the health of francophones in Ontario, a platform for gathering information on the sociodemographic data, health status, access to services and minority language health professionals, at different geographic scales. Finally, in 2017, the CIHR awarded her a grant for the Phase 1 development of a Socio-Sanitary Observatory of the Francophone Minority Population for collaborative research, knowledge mobilization and transfer. Her work has shed light on the impact of minority status as a determinant of health and service quality, using a variety of approaches: social epidemiology, conceptual mapping of representations, network analysis, geographic information system and qualitative approaches.
Jacinthe Savard is an occupational therapist and holds a PhD in public health. She is a professor at the School of Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Ottawa, co-chair of the University of Ottawa/Institut du Savoir Montfort Joint Chair on the Health of Francophones in Ontario, and founding member of the Groupe de recherche sur la formation et les pratiques en santé et service social en context francophone minoritaire (GReFoPS). Her expertise focuses on the organization of healthcare services for older adults, active offer, and the training of professionals in interprofessional collaborative practice. With Sébastien Savard and Marie Drolet, she co-directed several studies on the service trajectories of Francophones in minority situations and the factors that favour continuity of French-language services which have led to the creation of tools to help managers improve the offer and continuity of French-language services within their organizations. She has integrated training in active offer of services in French into the training of occupational therapy students, and subsequently into other programs at the School of Rehabilitation Sciences. She continues to work on improving the learning resources for this training, notably by creating simulation scenarios for active offer and observation checklists (or grids?) for active offer skills. She co-directed the production of the collective work Accessibilité et offer active : Santé et services sociaux en contexte linguistique minoritaire.