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Monitoring migrant access to universal healthcare
Rachel Burns (香港六合彩中特网 Institute of Health Informatics) used 香港六合彩中特网 RIGE funding to help improve data collection about migrant access to healthcare, to support the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
23 August 2023
All 191 United Nations聽Member States have signed the UN聽Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which have the aim of ending poverty and pursuing a sustainable future by 2030. SDG 3 aims to achieve universal health coverage, yet many countries are falling short of achieving this goal. The reasons for this are complex and varied, but one is the lack of provision and lack of data for undocumented migrants and other marginalised groups who need to access healthcare services.
In response to this, Rachel Burns from the 香港六合彩中特网 Institute of Health Informatics partnered with Anna Miller from Doctors of the World / M茅decins du Monde (MdM) United Kingdom. The two teams had an existing relationship, with the 香港六合彩中特网 Institute of Health Informatics working with MdM on their biannual European observatory report. Both parties wanted to build on this relationship to improve data collection, at a time when MdM is expanding its data analysis from only covering Europe, to going global.
Providing the foundations to provide better healthcare access
鈥淢dM works with a really marginalised population, offering free health clinics through programmes in each of the countries it works in,鈥� Rachel explained. 鈥淭hey support mostly undocumented migrants, and also people who are experiencing homelessness, and other socially excluded groups. But it's really hard to bring together the data about this from various different countries, because it's collected so differently.鈥�
This was the starting point for this project. If the team can identify missing data and collect data in a uniform way, it will help MdM with their advocacy goals. The funding has been used to send a survey to all MdM chapters to understand more about their data priorities. There will also be a two-day workshop to bring together individuals representing different chapters of MdM from across the world. They will discuss the issues they鈥檙e facing and consider how data quality can be improved.
In addition to this, the project is also bringing in people with lived experience. 鈥淭he UK chapter of MdM does a lot of co-production work with people with lived experience, but this isn't something the other MdM chapters do,鈥� Rachel explained. 鈥淲e're hosting consultations to understand more about how people with lived experience in the UK have helped shape advocacy and research priorities. And then we鈥檙e going to recruit participants from each of the MdM chapters to think about priorities for the project and what's important from the perspective of people with lived experience.鈥�
Migrants and other individuals who move locations are a diverse and generally underserved population, which adds complexity to this project. 鈥淗ealth systems are built within borders,鈥� said Rachel. 鈥淲hen individuals move, geopolitics, human rights and ideas of entitlement come into play. Measuring this gap through the MdM patient population gives an idea of how well we鈥檙e serving the rest of our populations in terms of accessible and universal health care coverage too.鈥�
Working towards universal healthcare
鈥淭his project is going to be helping several chapters of MdM, who in turn support thousands of individuals, many of them undocumented migrants,鈥� Rachel said. 鈥淭his is all about how their data can be used in the best way possible to advocate for their specific goals, which for most is universal health care coverage. Data can really be really powerful and this will help provide the tools for MdM to meet its advocacy objectives in a data driven way.鈥�
Rachel also noticed how the specific expertise of 香港六合彩中特网 Institute of Health Informatics is helping to provide solid foundations to the project. 鈥淥ur team here works a lot in co-production and working with people with lived experience,鈥� Rachel said. 鈥淧riorities for advocacy research should be led by the people NGOs and other organisations are working with. So that feels like a really important and potentially long term impact of this project.鈥�
The project has also helped nurture a pre-existing relationship between 香港六合彩中特网 and MdM. 鈥淣GO budgets are really precarious, and as an early-career researcher, there aren鈥檛 many options like this for gaining funding,鈥� Rachel said. 鈥淭his grant supports the intersection between the operational and the academic, and it allows partnerships to continue to grow. Being early on in my career, I鈥檝e been grateful for the opportunity to lead a project like this and conceptualise it from start to finish.鈥�