Dates: 2024-2026

Grant Awarded: $23,493

Awarding Body: SSHRC, Partnership Engage Grant

Role: Co-Investigator

Project: Newcomers are reshaping the face of Canada. There are increasing numbers of newcomers arriving in Canada, where governments send them to rural municipalities to supplement their shrinking populations and declining economic forces. However, newcomers face unique challenges in rural Canada (e.g., lack of public transits), while governmental support is lacking.

Project will focus on young immigrants’ experiences of life in rural Alberta.

Dates: March – July 2022

Grant Awarded: $120,000CAD

Awarding Body: Government of Alberta, Ministry of Health

Role: Project Manager for Action for Healthy Communities

Project: In this collaboration between Action for Healthy Communities (AHC), Centre for Newcomers Society of Calgary, Alberta Ministry of Health, our organization was directed to increase COVID-19 vaccine uptake in six of Alberta’s local geographic areas (LGAs) with the lowest vaccination rate. AHC’s expertise in supporting newcomer communities, as well as other vulnerable cohorts, was essential to the project focus.

Beyond the core project partners, AHC engaged six intersectoral community organizations (education, social services, newcomer-focused health care services, libraries) to provide information sessions and host vaccine clinics. The downstream intervention was the provision of the vaccine clinics, but this was only one project component. The upstream intervention was to provide recommendations to the Government of Alberta that would increase newcomers’ trust for public healthcare systems, such as multi-lingual publications, accessible healthcare services, representation from ethnocultural communities in public health settings, and community-focused healthcare events.

These recommendations were accepted in principle by the Government of Alberta and a research report of the findings was published in Canadian Diversity (19.1, 2023)