My thesis topic
My honours thesis is centred around the health-care experiences and decision-making of community-dwelling South-Asian elders who are 65 years or older during the COVID-19 pandemic in Southern Ontario to ascertain their experiences with health literacy.
This project will identify the primary source of information for Indian-born older adults to make informed health-care decisions. Additionally, the project will look at the role that family members have in making these decisions.
My co-supervisors were Dr. Catherine Tong and Dr. Roxanne Armstrong-Moore.
Why did you do this project?
As a first-generation immigrant, I realized that immigration status and race play a role in structural health inequities and prevent equitable access to health-care services for members of my community. As a South-Asian immigrant, I have experienced these systemic health inequities in Canada, exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic. One prevalent issue for this population during the pandemic is the misinformation surrounding COVID-19 and vaccine hesitancy due to poor health literacy. The underrepresentation of immigrant communities in Canada’s current body of research poses a barrier in creating health promotion interventions to improve health literacy within these underserved communities.
My recognition of this issue inspired me to conduct an undergraduate thesis highlighting this health disparity. This study, alongside my lived experience, empowered me to identify, highlight and tackle these systemic health inequities deeply embedded within Canada’s health-care system.
What did you enjoy about it the most?
This thesis allowed me to become a voice for an invisible segment in Canadian research and highlight health disparities in the Canadian health-care system for members of my community. As a result, I felt motivated to conduct groundbreaking research on this ignored yet important topic and contribute to my community. Additionally, I enjoyed conducting in-depth interviews with Indian-born immigrants and getting to know their experiences and thoughts!
The autonomy of the thesis allowed me to lead my qualitative study and constantly learn new skills, which inherently challenged me and helped me grow. Moreover, I'm very grateful to have worked with my amazing research supervisors as they allowed me to gain vital research experience about components such as qualitative data analysis, knowledge translation, conducting interviews or the ethics approval process!
How do you think it will help in the future?
Due to the lack of representation of immigrant communities in Canadian research, I believe my study, the first of its kind, can shape the future of public health initiatives within immigrant populations. As a future public health professional, I think this study will allow me to implement future health promotion interventions for these vulnerable populations, such as health literacy programs.
This study has equipped me with the knowledge and skills to understand the social determinants of health within underserved communities, particularly in immigrant and racialized groups. As an emerging public health leader, I aspire to utilize this knowledge and advocate for improving structural health disparities to drive change in the public health sphere and empower all marginalized communities.