Surveillance

Qaniuppitaa? How are we? Proposed Health Survey of the Inuit of Nunavik - 2004

This proposed health survey is in line with the updating of the responsibilities entrusted to the public health Director regarding the function of surveillance of the population’s health status and health determinants. In particular, under Section 43 of the Public Health Act (PHA), the latter is responsible for submitting the proposed survey to the CESP and for ensuring compliance with rules relating to the confidentiality and protection of personal information.

According to the new legislative safeguards stemming from the PHA (related to the updating of the surveillance function on the one hand and the role of the public health ethics committee on the other), since a proposed survey is one of the data sources that provides the information needed for the production of a surveillance plan, it should be directly linked to the latter. However, given that these measures have been implemented recently and work on the proposed survey has already begun, the CESP deemed the project…

Comité d'éthique de santé publique

Evaluation of the completeness of the Fichier des tumeurs du Québec

Cancer registries are essential tools for monitoring cancer. There are four main components to the quality of this type of registry: completeness, validity of data, timeliness of access to data, and range of data available.

Completeness refers to the ability of a cancer registry to identify and register all new cancer cases diagnosed within a population. Completeness can vary considerably from one place to another, because of variations in resources and data collection methods, or variations in diagnostic examinations. An excellent level of completeness is essential in order to produce accurate statistics and conduct valid studies on cancer in a population. Evaluating the completeness of registration of new cases is therefore a priority activity for all cancer registries.

The completeness of the cancer registry is an especially important concern for Quebec. In Canada's other provinces, several sources are used to supply data to the cancer registries, foremost of whic…

Survival Probabilities for Cancer Cases Reported between 1984 and 1998 in Quebec - Observed & Relative Survival

In May 2002, in cooperation with the Ministère de la Santé et Services sociaux, the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) published survival tables for the four main cancer sites—lung, breast (female), colorectal, and prostate—for cases reported to the Quebec Cancer Registry (QCR) in 1992. These cases were used to calculate the relative survival probability five years after diagnosis.

The study was designed to measure the quality of the incidence and mortality data used to calculate survival probabilities and determine vital status. It has also served to illustrate the decisive impact of data quality on results. Data was also compared with the five year relative survival probabilities in other Canadian provinces despite the fact that Quebec does not establish the date of diagnosis in the same manner and draws its incidence information from a different source.

This report is a continuation of the overall project. Here, survival probabilities have been…

Cancer Survival of Newly Diagnosed Cases, Quebec, 1992

The main purpose of this study is to describe the quality of the data used to calculate survival in Quebec. The discussion will focus on the quality of incidence and mortality data, the kind of file linkage needed to determine a person’s vital status, and the influence that this data quality has on survival results. This study is also part of a Canada-wide initiative to quantify cancer survival. Statistics Canada and the Canadian Cancer Survival Analysis Group have produced a Canadian Cancer Survival Protocol. To facilitate comparison, the protocol used in this survival study is largely based on the Canadian protocol.

The survival indicator is based primarily on the vital status of the cases reported. Vital status is not reported systematically in the Tumours File. It must be determined by matching the Tumours File against the Deaths File. Unfortunately, the Deaths File is not sufficient. A supplementary linkage with the administrative file of RAMQ subscribers shows that abo…

Trauma and deprivation in Quebec

Studies show a relationship between social inequality and intentional and unintentional trauma (Marmot et al., 1999; Leclerc et al., 2000). This relationship is poorly understood in Quebec, however, since data on trauma is derived primarily from administrative files (for death and hospitalization), which contain no information on the socioeconomic status of trauma victims.

The recent development of a deprivation index that can be used with these files enables us to at least partially fill this information gap (Pampalon et al., 2000). In this brief paper, we seek to determine whether material and social deprivation is associated with death and hospitalization due to intentional and unintentional trauma in Quebec.

In Quebec, material and social deprivation are strongly associated with trauma. While UT (mostly road traffic accidents) is affected by material deprivation, IT (suicide and homicide) is affected in equal measure by the social and material components. Social…