University of Ottawa/Institut du Savoir Montfort Joint Chair on the Health of Francophones in Ontario

The research program helps better identify socio-territorial inequalities in health; determine service needs; identify vulnerable sub-groups; estimate and improve health-care systems’ capacity to meet the needs of these populations; document the impact of language barriers on safety and quality of care; and support the training of a new generation of researchers studying the health of Francophones in minority settings.

The University of Ottawa/Institut du Savoir Montfort Joint Chair on the Health of Francophones in Ontario has nominated Professor Michelle Lalonde for a five-year term.

Michelle Lalonde, an associate professor at the University of Ottawa's School of Nursing within the Faculty of Health Sciences, will continue to advance evidence-based research to support the development of high-quality health services for Francophone communities in Ontario and across Canada. Her work will focus on researching ways to effectively support future generations of Francophone nurses, so they are well-equipped with the skills needed to provide safe, ethical health care in Ontario.

This research chair’s program presents several key goals, including understanding how the next generation of Francophone nurses is preparing for and transitioning into practice. Professor Michelle Lalonde will seek to propose concrete solutions to challenges related to the lack of French-language resources and linguistic barriers. To this end, she will analyze, among other things, the experiences of nurses facing professional exams, such as the NCLEX-RN, which often prove to be unsuitable for Francophones in Ontario.

In 2019–2024, the chair co-holders, who are now Emeritus Professors, were Louise Bouchard, from the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies, and Jacinthe Savard, from the School of Rehabilitation Sciences. This chair was known for its commitment to filling gaps in research and proposing practical solutions to meet the health-care challenges specific to Ontario francophones. It’s mission was to create and disseminate scientific knowledge about Ontario francophones’ health, so that this knowledge would be better taken into account in health-care planning and provision, to improve practice and policy.

Project highlights for the chair include a study on Ontario francophones’ access to health-care services, which led to recommendations for improvement. Another notable project was a training program for health-care professionals on provision of culturally and linguistically adapted services for francophones. Finally, the chair created a knowledge mobilization website focused on health care and services offered in a minority official language. This single window for health-care and social services offers access to a bibliographic database and related documents, various summaries, and dashboards on populations and organizational capacity in terms of French service offerings (www.sante-closm.ca).