British Columbia’s Index of Multiple Deprivation for Community Health Service Areas

Sharon Relova,Naveed Janjua,Li Rita Zhang,Drona Rasali,Yayuk Joffres,Geoffrey Mckee

doi:10.3390/data7020024

Abstract

Area-based socio-economic indicators, such as the Canadian Index of Multiple Deprivation (CIMD), have been used in equity analyses to inform strategies to improve needs-based, timely, and effective patient care and public health services to communities. The CIMD comprises four dimensions of deprivation: residential instability, economic dependency, ethno-cultural composition, and situational vulnerability. Using the CIMD methodology, the British Columbia Index of Multiple Deprivation (BCIMD) was developed to create indexes at the Community Health Services Area (CHSA) level in British Columbia (BC). BCIMD indexes are reported by quintiles, where quintile 1 represents the least deprived (or ethno-culturally diverse), and quintile 5 is the most deprived (or diverse). Distinctive characteristics of a community can be captured using the BCIMD, where a given CHSA may have a high level of deprivation in one dimension and a low level of deprivation in another. The utility of this data as a surveillance tool to monitor population demography has been used to inform decision making in healthcare by stakeholders in the regional health authorities and governmental agencies. The data have also been linked to health care data, such as COVID-19 case incidence and vaccination coverage, to understand the epidemiology of disease burden through an equity lens.

Highlights

People’s health and well-being are influenced by where they live and work, their demographic characteristics, socio-economic status, and many other social and material factors [1]
The objective of this paper is to describe the methodological adaptation of the Canadian Index of Multiple Deprivation (CIMD) to create the British Columbia (BC) Index of Multiple Deprivation (BCIMD) at the Community Health Services Area (CHSA) level and its prospective uses in the health care system
Quintiles and scores for each dimension for each CHSA are available for use by the public

Summary

Introduction

People’s health and well-being are influenced by where they live and work, their demographic characteristics, socio-economic status, and many other social and material factors [1]. These factors influence the distribution of health outcomes that manifest among population groups across geographic areas; such factors are not uniform across British Columbia (BC) [2,3]. Health equality refers to the access to, or distribution of, resources evenly among individuals, whereas equity is the fair access to, or distribution of, resources according to an individual’s needs [5,6]. Identifying and quantifying these measures are necessary to provide a more equitable approach to health care

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion