An Examination of “Excluded” Health Services in Canada: A Focus on Mental Health Services for Children

Date and time:  Tuesday 12 March 2024, 14:00 hours (2.00 pm UK GMT)

Location: L1 Main Meeting Room, Richard Doll Building, Old Road Campus, Headington, OX3 7LF

To Join: This is a free event, which will be taking place both in-person and online via Zoom/Microsoft Teams. Register

Abstract: The prevalence of child mental/developmental health conditions has increased over time in Canada and abroad, a trend further heighted in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Left unaddressed, child mental/developmental health conditions may carry contemporaneous and/or long-term negative effects. Access to timely and appropriate care is essential to mitigate these potential negative effects.

In Canada, while health and social policies are developed to reduce health inequalities, their features may inadvertently create and perpetuate them. Under the Canada Health Act, only “medically necessary” health services are publicly insured, specifically physician and hospital services. This policy structure leaves a number of health services excluded from the public basket, such as mental health services. As a remedy, Canada allows for deemed “vulnerable” groups, including children, to be partly publicly insured for these services under extended public benefits programs. However, these programs vary significantly across provinces and territories creating uneven access.
Dr. Arpin’s current research program aims to understand barriers to health services “excluded” from the Canadian public insurance program, with a particular focus on mental health services for children. For this research seminar, Dr. Arpin will present ongoing work from her postdoctoral research program: (1) Canadian remedial public programs for children for excluded services from a jurisdictional rapid review, with a focus on mental health services, (2) inequalities in household spending on excluded services in Canada, and (3) data opportunities to study barriers to mental health services for children.
She will complement the presentation of her current program of research with results from her doctoral work on the long-term effects of childhood chronic conditions in Canada and the US (Economics and Human Biology, 2023; SSM-Population Health, 2023). This body of work notably found that mental/neurodevelopmental health conditions during childhood negatively impact later outcomes to a greater extent than physical conditions. These, and future findings, highlight the importance of critically examining the role of Canada’s quasi-universal health care system.

Bio: Emmanuelle Arpin, PhD is a postdoctoral researcher in Health Services Research at McGill University (Montreal, Canada). She is affiliated with the Department of Equity, Ethics and Policy (DEEP) at the School of Population and Global Health. Her postdoctoral fellowship is funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Santé (FRQS). She completed her PhD in 2022 at the University of Toronto at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation (IHPME) in Health Services Research in the Health Economics specialization.

Dr. Arpin’s current research program aims to understand barriers to health services “excluded” from the Canadian public insurance program, with a particular focus on mental health services for children. Her research approach is interdisciplinary with foundations in economics, sociology, epidemiology and public health. She primarily employs econometric methods and analyzes linked administrative and survey data. She has recently published in Economics and Human Biology, SSM, SSM-Population Health, Canadian Journal of Public Health and Health Policy.