Building Relationships to Integrate Community-Driven Guidance for Health Equity
The Challenge
Canada is home to an immigrant population of 8.3 million people, nearly one quarter of the country, and this number continues to rise. Projections suggest immigrants could make up as much as a third of the population by 2041. This growth brings diversity and strength to Canadian society, and it also points to areas the health system will need to address.
Immigrant, newcomer and racialized communities face multiple intersecting barriers that contribute to health inequities. These inequities span infectious and chronic diseases, including viral hepatitis, tuberculosis, COVID-19, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and people are often managing more than one condition at a time, which compounds health risks and makes care harder to access, and structural and systemic barriers sit behind these patterns.
These inequities are well recognized in practice, yet population-based evidence that reflects these communities is largely missing. Community input is rarely sought when research and public health programs are being designed, and communities are more often approached once decisions have been made. These requests arrive separately and unconnected, each drawing on the limited time and resources of community-based organizations.
This is the landscape BRIDGE is working to change.
Our Vision
BRIDGE envisions a future where immigrant, newcomer and racialized communities lead and actively shape the health systems that serve them. We are working to build a bridge between communities, researchers, clinicians, and health system and public health leaders, so that research questions and decisions are guided by community priorities, lived experience, and cultural context. Instead of isolated and extractive projects, we aim to build sustainable, coordinated provincial infrastructure that brings these groups together under a shared process.
Our vision is a research ecosystem where community leadership is foundational, knowledge flows both ways, and decisions are rooted in trust, equity, and long-term collaboration.
Our mission is to change how health research and public health programs are shaped, so that community-based organizations lead this work, from setting priorities to interpreting what findings mean for their communities.
What BRIDGE does
BRIDGE is building coordinated infrastructure through community-led engagement and shared governance. Together we are working to identify health priorities with communities, create population health profiles that map health needs and available services, strengthen capacity through workshops and training, and use data to inform service delivery and policy. The same connections will also support wider public health work. Importantly, BRIDGE aims to build trusted relationships during stable times, so that they can be drawn on quickly during future health emergencies.
Building the foundation
Foundation building has been underway since late 2025, together with S.U.C.C.E.S.S., MOSAIC, DIVERSEcity and Surrey LIP, SWAN Vancouver, and Roots Community Health Centre. We have completed governance conversations with each of these organizations, held a facilitation skills workshop for their staff in April 2026, and received research ethics approval from the University of British Columbia. Two community circles have been held with S.U.C.C.E.S.S., in July and August 2026, bringing together over 50 English, Mandarin and Cantonese speaking participants, and further circles are underway across language and demographic groups.
Over the coming months we will convene a shared governance workshop to co-design how BRIDGE is governed and identify shared research priorities, co-create an inventory documenting the communities each organization serves and their capacity for engagement, and begin consultations with clinicians and health system leaders.
Growing BRIDGE
BRIDGE is still growing. We continue to welcome organizations serving immigrant, newcomer and racialized communities across British Columbia, along with clinicians, researchers, and policy leaders working towards health equity.
If you or your organization is interested in collaborating, learning together, or shaping the future of immigrant and racialized health research, please contact the BRIDGE team at Analytics.PH@ubc.ca.