On Equitable Epilepsy Care for Patients in Northern Ontario & First Nations | Dr. Carter Snead
Dr. Carter Snead on the Future Hopes for ECHO Epilepsy Ontario
Health equity is not only a core issue for epilepsy patient’s accessing health care across the spans of Northern Ontario but it is also an issue impacting equitable access to professional learning and development opportunities for physicians and health care practitioners in Ontario’s northern communities and regions.
The Project ECHO Epilepsy Ontario CME program, was created in part to help increase understanding of and access to the benefits of epilepsy surgery for patients across Ontario. Since launching in 2018, the accredited program has achieved significant success in meeting this goal through the implementation of the provincial Epilepsy Strategy, of which Project ECHO Epilepsy Ontario is a key player, in the field of continuing medical education. And yet there’s still so much more work to be done.
The month of June is a special time in Canada to celebrate and honour the Indigenous peoples through celebrations such as Indigenous History Month (#IndigenousHistoryMonth) and National Indigenous Peoples Day (#IndigenousPeoplesDay).
To celebrate and honour is to serve, and a key concern our CME program hopes to serve are the issues of equitable access to epilepsy care for patients in the northern and rural regions of Ontario and to First Nations populations. A 2018 study by University of Saskatchewan researchers discovered that epilepsy is double the national average among First Nations people in Canada while these same populations only represent 5% of patients benefiting from access to epilepsy surgery. 1.
As a CBC article on the study noted, lead researcher Jose Tellez-Zenteno, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine, said “research in Saskatchewan shows 95 per cent of people getting the surgery are non-Indigenous. That means that these patients are not having the benefits of epilepsy surgery,” he said adding, “more outreach to Indigenous communities is needed.” 2.
Project ECHO Epilepsy Ontario is a significant and unique channel of epilepsy education, awareness and community building amongst healthcare providers who are caring for epilepsy patients in their community practices. Dr. Carter Snead, world-renowned epileptologist and retired Co-Lead / Founder of Project ECHO Epilepsy Ontario, gave us a parting interview upon his retirement, in which he expressed his hopes for the care and service reach of the ECHO Epilepsy program: “My big hope for the future is that we could somehow develop strategies to reach the northern part of the province, in particular First Nations.” Watch the full video clip with Dr. Snead above.
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