The Canadian Collaboration for Immigrant and Refugee Health (CCIRH), is a six year old interdisciplinary collaboration dedicated to improving the health of migrants. The Canadian Collaboration for Immigrant and Refugee Health (CCIRH), is a six year old interdisciplinary collaboration involving over 150 primary care practitioners, specialists, researchers, immigrant community leaders, and policy ma
kers, that shines an evidence-based lens on the emerging new discipline of migrant health. CCIRH began with an ambitious project aimed at producing evidence based guidelines for primary care practitioners that cover a broad range of infectious diseases; mental health and physical and emotional maltreatment; chronic noncommunicable diseases; and women’s health; conditions identified by practitioners working with new immigrants. Made possible thanks to the participation of methodologists from the Cochrane Collaboration and the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care and based on evidence gathered from around the world, CCIRH has developed practical evidence-based recommendations to help practitioners effectively meet the unfamiliar health needs of newly arriving immigrants and refugees. “More work must be done to improve immigrants’ access to health services,” conclude the authors. “We hope this evidence-based initiative will provide a foundation for improved health care for immigrant populations.”
The next phase- CCIRH Phase II- is currently being developed and will focus on identifying and supporting evidence-based practices that can improve the delivery of primary health care for vulnerable migrant populations. It is designed to provide practical evidence-based recommendations and high quality education resources to primary care practitioners and medical students, immigrant community champions and health advocates, and health and immigration policymakers.
