Professor Suzanne Bouclin is part of an interdisciplinary research team that is examining how COVID-19 has impacted Ottawa’s most marginalized communities. The team is comprised of researchers that have built trust with these communities over the last 10 years through community-based participatory action research.
Led by Dr. Smita Pakhale, the project, entitled “Understanding the challenge of COVID-19 for Ottawa’s most vulnerable people”, has received funding from the Ottawa Hospital Foundation’s COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund, as well as Ontario’s COVID-19 Rapid Research Fund.
Team members bring a variety of perspectives to the social and health-related challenges and inequalities faced by low-income and homeless people in Ottawa. They will examine how these inequities are exacerbated by crises like the COVID-19 pandemic, including, for example, the barriers that prevent them from accessing health services. Data collected through this project will help in the development of better policies and programs to help vulnerable populations during COVID-19 and future crises.
Professor Bouclin is also contributing to another COVID-19 rapid response project – “Pandemic Policing of the Homeless in Canada: From Crime Control to Public Health Strategy” – led by Professor Joe Hermer of the University of Toronto. Read more about that project here.
The Common Law Section thanks Professor Bouclin and her colleagues for this important and timely work.