title: [Validation of the equity of access of the OLMCS to health professionals in health regions of Canada].
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Our research uses a regional summary indicator (IHPOLM) to measure the capacity of the health system to provide equitable access to health professionals for 2 million Official Language Minority Community (OLMC) members dispersed across 104 health regions in Canada.
  
  
  METHODS
  The summary indicator IHPOLM compares the official language minority and the official language majority potential access to health professionals. The IHPOLM indicator uses 22 professional health care occupations, representing 79% of the health care workforce in Canada, who communicate directly with their clientele for therapeutic or diagnostic purposes (Statistics Canada, 2006).
  
  
  RESULTS
  The IHPOLM indicator revealed that the OLMC population is at a disadvantage in potential access to health professionals capable of providing services in the minority language when compared to the majority language population in 10 of the 13 Canadian provinces/territories. OLMC members are disadvantaged in 13 out of 14 health regions in Ontario, in 16 out of 18 in Québec and in 3 out of 7 in New Brunswick.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The summary regional indicator IHPOLM identified OLMC health care access inequalities between the official language minority population and the majority language population in the health care system across the health regions in Canada. The more detailed analysis of IHPOLM for individual health occupations will further improve our knowledge of Official Language Minority Community health access inequalities.
authors.affiliation: Université Laval. jwarnke@total.net.
authors.forename: Jan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Warnke
authors.forename: Louise
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Bouchard
mesh_terms: D002170:Canada; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration*; D062306:Geography, Medical; D006282:Health Personnel; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006302:Health Services Research; D054625:Healthcare Disparities; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008913:Minority Groups; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: Health disparities; access to health services; health geography; official language minority