Project brings new view on health profile of people in Canadian prisons

A project led by Dr. Fiona Kouyoumdjian from the McMaster University Department of Family Medicine (DFM) will help clinicians, policy makers, and the public better understand the health profile of people in federal prisons and support high quality health care for this population.

The project, which was awarded $820,000 by the Public Health Agency of Canada, will use routinely collected health care data to develop a system to monitor population-level chronic disease prevalence and health care indicators over time. The project will establish the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) as a site of the Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN), which brings together anonymized health data from primary care networks across the country to support research, disease surveillance, and health care quality improvement.

“People who are incarcerated are not included in most provincial and national health surveillance efforts,” says Kouyoumdjian, a leader in prison health research. “In this project, we are engaging a diverse group of stakeholders to understand which health conditions should be looked at first through the project and how to share findings with stakeholders. This project will support action to improve health and health care for this population.”

The project is leveraging expertise in practice-based research networks and CPCSSN participation that is already in place at the department of family medicine. Since 2015, the McMaster University Sentinel and Information Collaboration has been one of twelve networks contributing data to CPCSSN.

Production of this communication has been made possible through funding from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the view of the Public Health Agency of Canada.