Health committee  I would say addressing racism as a social determinant of health. As I said, there is segregation in the health care workforce. How do we have interventions that ensure that there is diversity across all levels of the health care workforce, from leadership positions to frontline service delivery?

Health committee  I should preface by saying that my doctoral work was actually on the migration of Philippine-educated nurses to Canada to work as domestic workers. That was about nine years ago, but some of the issues still exist now. I am also on some WhatsApp groups for some internationally educated professionals.

Health committee  I think we need to subjugate our data. One of the challenges, and one of my colleagues said this.... For example, I did a study where I looked at the mental health of immigrant and non-immigrant kids in Canada. When you look at all of the data together, everything gets clouded, but then when you start to disaggregate it....

Health committee  I think one of the things about sports is that it goes through several pathways to influence health, whether it's mental health or physical health. We know that sports also contribute.... As I said, community belonging is one of the strong determinants of mental health, at least based on my analysis.

Health committee  Someone asked about improving access to emergency services. I think that one of those things is addressing issues related to language barriers and also those related to culture as a social determinant of health. Years ago, the Public Health Agency of Canada used to have racism subsumed under “culture” as a determinant of health.

Health committee  In 2020, an analysis was done in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa on neighbourhoods, and when you look at neighbourhoods and COVID-19 distribution, it found that the strongest determinant of whether or not you'd get COVID in the early days of COVID was whether or not you were Black—the concentration of Black people in the neighbourhood.

Health committee  I am a member of the Black Opportunity Fund, which serves to address anti-Black racism in Canada through raising a pool of funds. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we organized town halls to address COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. I remember doing one of those town halls.

Health committee  Thank you. That project that I did was only in Alberta. Now, the survey that we're doing currently—with 2,000 Black youth and 50 interviews—is across Canada. In that project, we interviewed 129 Black youth in that focus group. The most frequently talked about contributor to their mental health was racism.

Health committee  The consultative part of the study is ongoing, but we've completed the qualitative phase, and there are a few things. Oftentimes we are focused on train, train, train and fundraising initiatives. People get training; they get out of the room; they leave everything in the room, and it's all done.

Health committee  I totally agree with the need for community-based mental health service delivery. Right before the pandemic, we did a study in Alberta to look at the mental health of Black youth. We did one before the pandemic, and we did one after the pandemic. We engaged about 129 Black youth in conversation cafés and also interviews on their mental health.

Health committee  I must say that poverty and income inequality do not exist in isolation. We also see, for example, race-based inequalities and how those contribute, for example, to income inequality. Statistics Canada just released a report that found that, contrary to public opinion, African immigrants have one of the highest education rates in Canada.

Health committee  The youths I have met talked about.... For a lot of Black youth, a way for them to deal with the racism they experience, or the challenges, or just the general everyday stress was to engage in sports. People talked a lot about basketball and being able to engage in that. Many of the youth discussed....

Health committee  My area of expertise is not.... I'm a strong ally and I know that there is a strong need out there—

Health committee  I will tell you, I did that study and analyzed the Canadian health measures survey to look at the mental health of immigrants in Canada. No matter how much we analyzed the data of 12,000 people on the Canadian health measures survey, the two strongest contributors to mental health were community belonging and income.

Health committee  One thing that has been repeatedly talked about on this panel is the need for us to focus on the causes of the causes. We've already mentioned some of those causes: income and racial and gender inequality. You talked about single-parent families. For example, I've done research, in the past, on single-parent moms.