Opening doors for cancer screening in a downtown priority neighbourhood
Led by the University of Toronto’s Rosanra Yoon, Access Alliance is excited to be part of this new project: Open Door to Address Cancer Screening Hesitancy: a community-based co-design project to address cancer screening hesitancy in a downtown Toronto west priority neighbourhood.
Project focus
With funding support provided by the Strategy for Patient-Oriented Research (SPOR) through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, over the next year, we will work with project partners to begin initial work of a larger project to co-develop a community-engaged, participatory process to develop cancer screening engagement strategies to address cancer screening hesitancy in one downtown Mid-West Toronto Ontario Health Team (MWT-OHT) priority neighbourhood. The project will use population health data to focus on the most vulnerable and under-reached equity-deserving populations from the MWT-OHT and to leverage learnings from our team members’ co-design equity work in cancer screening.
Why it matters
During the pandemic, social and health service partners of the Mid-West Toronto Ontario Health Team (MWT-OHT) rallied in response to inequities and high COVID-19 morbidity in priority neighbourhoods with high rates of material deprivation, marginalization and racialization. People who are racialized, immigrants, newcomers, or with low incomes have lower cancer screening rates, which increases mortality and poor outcomes.
Postal code data shows that across MWT-OHT priority neighbourhoods, screening rates for breast, colorectal, and cervical cancer are lower than the provincial average. Through community ambassadors on the ground and people affected by cancer, we discovered that screening hesitancy and the lack of culturally and gender responsive screening engagement strategies were key drivers that were not being addressed. What was needed was a co-created, community-driven approach.
The approach
This project will co-create equity-oriented cancer screening engagement strategies that address hesitancy for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening. We seek to close the gaps encountered in the community by bringing together service planners and health and social services around the needs of the community, as they have identified, to address screening hesitancy and develop engagement and outreach strategies that are responsive to their needs.
We will employ an intersectional sex-gender-race equity lens in our work, with the aim of understanding the experiences of 2SLGBTQIA+, newcomers, immigrants, and people living on low incomes across the identified communities of the MWT-OHT, for whom we intend to reduce inequities in access to and acceptability of cancer screening.
What we hope to achieve
This project will co-develop a community-engaged participatory model of cancer screening engagement to advance cancer-related health equity amongst priority neighbourhoods.
By co-designing cancer screening engagement strategies with priority local communities, we hope to address cancer screening hesitancy, improve cancer screening engagement strategies for people experiencing structural vulnerability, strengthen community and service system pathways from the bottom up that are community-centred and equity-driven, and increase screening engagement strategies and uptake in priority communities in ways that are co-created.
We will share and leverage what we learn in this project to promote system-level integration of community-engaged equity-oriented engagement processes for Ontario Health Teams.
Stay tuned as we share progress and information from this project over the coming months.
Open Door is a Mid-West Toronto Ontario Health Team initiative led by Access Alliance.
Related work
Addressing Cervical Cancer Screening Inequity among Newcomer Women via HPV Self-Sampling
This research project sought to build evidence on community-based and culturally sensitive care pathways for promoting HPV self-sampling-based screening for cervical cancer among under/never-screened women within immigrant communities.
Self-collection for early detection: New steps in cervical cancer screening will help save lives
Making a cervical cancer screening test more accessible is essential. Dr. Mandana Vahabi recently wrote in an OpEd that another way of testing is crucial to preventing cervical cancer – human papillomavirus (HPV) screening (not currently offered in Ontario). Early detection is important to save lives. We know that, compared to other groups, immigrant and Indigenous women have lower rates of cervical cancer screening. This is true at both the national and provincial levels.
Binary & Beyond: Taking Care of Our Bodies – 2SLGBTQI+ Breast & Chest Cancer Screening in Ontario
Binary & Beyond is a community-led video produced by Access Alliance’s Open Door Program—with the support of the Mid-West Toronto Ontario Health Team— encouraging 2SLGBTQI+ people aged 40 to 74 in Ontario to get breast and chest cancer screening.
The Open Door Program
This program aims to improve the health of high-priority communities in Toronto’s west end. Active in many neighbourhoods, the Open Door Program brings important health information, resources and support directly to residents living in those communities. This is an initiative of the Mid-West Toronto Ontario Health Team (OHT), with Access Alliance as the lead agency. By bringing services directly to communities through pop-up health information kiosks, group education sessions, and health coaching, Open Door is very accessible to local residents.