Population health

Population

• Nunavik's population has doubled over the past 30 years, growing from 5,860 in 1986 to 11,860 in 2011.
• Nunavik's population is young: approximately one third (34%) of the population is under 15 years of age, compared to 16% for Québec.
• The population aged 65 or older has been constantly growing since the end of the nineties and will continue to grow over the next few years: the proportion of people aged 65 or older will increase from 3% in 2011 to 8% in 2031.
• Nunavik can be easily compared with other Inuit regions: they all have a large proportion of young people and few elderly at this time.

Fertility

• The average number of children per woman in Nunavik is one of the highest in Québec with 3.2 children per woman in Nunavik and 1.6 in Québec for the 2004–2008 period.
• The women of Nunavik have children at a younger age than their peers in Qué…

This summary features highlights from the first section of the Nunavik Health Profile 2011 on demographic and socioeconomic conditions. It contains information on demographic (population, fertility) and socioeconomic (family, education, employment, income, food security) indicators.

The demographic and socioeconomic profile that emerges allows us to identify certain challenges that need to be addressed in order to improve health and well-being among the Nunavimmiut.

• Population growth: The population of Nunavik has increased significantly in recent years, and this trend is continuing. The regional housing supply has not kept up with this strong population growth and the needs of new families. Nunavik should obtain the necessary support from provincial and federal authorities to be able to offer adequate housing in sufficient numbers.
• Education: Education and employment are already major regional development issues. Young people age 15 to 24 are curren…

In the early 1990s the indicator disability-adjusted life years (DALY) was developed in response to a need for data used in health decision-making on an international scale. Since then, a number of countries have used this indicator to produce territorial estimates.

This indicator is of interest insofar as it considers both mortality and loss of functional health. It also allows for comparison of estimates produced for various health conditions and to rank their impacts on the health of a population under study. The impacts of disease on mortality are measured using years of life lost (YLL) and loss of functional health is estimated using years lost due to disability (YLD). DALYs are calculated as the sum of YLL and YLD.

The objectives of this report are to:

• introduce the indicator disability-adjusted life years and its components;
• describe the estimation methods used and the main methodological limitations; and
…

As part of a wide-ranging project to study the health status of Québec's Anglophones, the present analysis examines the Anglophone population's socioeconomic situation over time, by geographic area, and in comparison with Francophones. The variable used to establish membership in the Anglophone population is the mother tongue. The study analyzes standard socioeconomic indicators, as well as income disparity.

The analysis of census socioeconomic indicators shows that despite a generally positive progression over the period 1991-2006, the relatively favourable picture of the socioeconomic situation of Anglophones for Québec as a whole is tempered when the available data are examined by geographic area and in comparison with Francophones. For example, despite high levels of university education, Anglophones register higher unemployment rates than Francophones. And despite higher average incomes overall, they are proportionally more likely to live below the low income cut-o…

In the early 1990s the indicator disability-adjusted life years (DALY) was developed in response to a need for data used in health decision-making on an international scale. Since then, a number of countries have used this indicator to produce territorial estimates.

This indicator is of interest insofar as it considers both mortality and loss of functional health. It also allows for comparison of estimates produced for various health conditions and to rank their impacts on the health of a population under study. The impacts of disease on mortality are measured using years of life lost (YLL) and loss of functional health is estimated using years lost due to disability (YLD). DALYs are calculated as the sum of YLL and YLD.

The objectives of this synthesis are to:

• introduce the indicator disability-adjusted life years and its components;
• describe the estimation methods used and the main methodological limitations; and
…

This document falls within the framework of the analysis project on the health of official language minority communities in Quebec led by the INSPQ, in collaboration with the Community Health and Social Services Network (CHSSN) and the Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux. This report focuses on the validity of the “language spoken at home” variable present in death records as they currently exist. This information is important since we use it to attribute a language status to the deceased based on this variable, especially for the mortality analysis with relation to linguistic group.

In our work, language is a health determinant. Therefore, it is used as a discriminating factor, which has rarely been the case in Quebec up until now. Some ecological studies have indirectly taken a look at linguistic communities since they were interested in neighbourhood and socioeconomic status. Other studies that took place between 1970 and 1980 have used ethnicity, which was form…

In Canada, everyone has the right to receive health and social services in the language of their choice—English or French (Official Languages Act, 1985). In Québec, health and social services legislation affirms English speakers’ right to receive health and social services in English.

From this perspective, it will be instructive to analyze whether healthcare providers communicate in the minority official language, i.e., English in Québec. Using the 2001 and 2006 censuses, Statistics Canada drew a picture of official-language knowledge among healthcare professionals, and we have examined that data to assess the situation in Québec. The province was divided into five (5) geographic regions that can be linked to Québec’s health and social services regions.

A number of linguistic variables are available from the census, including native language, language spoken at home, knowledge of official languages, and the derived “first official language spoken” (FOLS) variable2.…

Since its creation in the late 1990s, the Québec index of material and social deprivation has been widely utilized in the field of public health for purposes that range from health monitoring and policy development to evaluation of services and resource allocation. More recently, a Canadian version of the index has been produced and used at that level.

There are provincial, regional, and local versions of the Québec index. Four revisions have been made over the years, in conjunction with the 1991, 1996, 2001, and 2006 censuses. While some publications have examined the index's construction for a specific census year, none of them have tracked its methodological components throughout the period from 1991 to 2006. Therefore we cannot easily follow up on modifications that pertain to basic area units, the indicators that comprise the index, or how they are combined.

The intent of this paper is to remedy that deficiency and to respond to index users' requests in this reg…

The survey was conducted during the summer of 2003 using a representative sample of residents aged 12 and older from the nine communities in Iiyiyiu Aschii: Chisasibi, Eastmain, Mistissini, Nemaska, Oujé- Bougoumou, Waskaganish, Waswanipi, Wemindji, and Whapmagoostui.

• One out of six Iiyiyiu Aschii residents reports himself or herself to be in “fair or poor” health.
• Life expectancy at birth of Iiyiyiu Aschii residents is two years less than that of residents of the rest of Quebec (77.2 vs. 79.2 years). The difference is slightly more than 3 years between women of both regions (78.7 vs. 81.9 years).
• More than half (57 %) of Iiyiyiu Aschii residents reported a long-term health problem. The five main problems reported in 2003 were hypertension, non food-related allergies, diabetes, back problems and migraine headaches.
• The prevalence of some of the main chronic health problems reported increased between 1991 and 2003:
  • Asthma, bron…

This publication presents the findings of a health survey carried out in 2003 among households of Iiyiyiu Aschii1. A similar survey had been undertaken in the region by Santé Québec in 1991 (Santé Québec, 1994). Ten years later, the Public Health Department of the Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay (CBHSSJB) urgently required a new picture of its population’s state of health. The purpose of the 2003 survey was to gather up-to-date information on the region’s main health problems and related factors in order to improve the planning, administration, and evaluation of various social and health programs.

According to the 2001 Public Health Act (Loi sur la santé publique), Quebec’s public health departments must periodically assess the health of their respective populations. Since 2000-2001, the province’s sociosanitary regions – with the exception of Iiyiyiu Aschii and Nunavik – have participated in the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) conducted by Stat…