A new article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal is advocating for more Indigenous students to be enrolled in Canada's medical schools.
The authors wrote that Indigenous students from reserves, rural and Northern communities continue to be under-represented in Canadian medical schools, which likely contributes substantially to ongoing health inequities in these communities."A combination of socioeconomic disadvantage, geographic barriers to pursuing prerequisite post-secondary education, and limited opportunities to gain early exposure to careers in health care likely contributes to this problem," said the article.
“This rationale is substantiated by a 10-year study conducted at the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, which showed that Indigenous applicants from a rural background were 50 per cent less likely to be offered an interview, and 30 per cent less likely to be offered admission than their urban counterparts,” said the article.
According to 2021 Canadian Census data, 12.9 per cent of Indigenous people have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 32.9 per cent of the Canadian population. This barrier disproportionately affects Indigenous students from First Nations and Inuit backgrounds, those who live on reserve, and those from rural and Northern areas.