Roundtable and Workshop April 2026
Beyond Access Roundtable: Reframing Healthcare Equity in Ottawa
April 27, 2026 · 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
The Roundtable brings together researchers, policymakers, healthcare providers, community organizations, and individuals with lived experience to examine how healthcare access for asylum seekers is structured in practice.
Building on the research, the Roundtable focuses on a central question: How are barriers to healthcare access produced, experienced, and addressed within Ottawa’s current system?
Purpose
The Roundtable creates a structured space for dialogue across sectors. It moves beyond isolated perspectives to examine how governance, policy, institutional practices, and lived experience intersect. The goal is not only to identify challenges, but to develop a shared understanding of how the system operates and where it breaks down.
Focus Areas
Discussions are organized around key areas identified in the research:
System Structure
How federal and provincial systems interact, including the role of the Interim Federal Health Program and provincial healthcare delivery.
Administrative Processes
How eligibility rules, documentation, and reimbursement systems shape access to care.
Frontline Practice
How healthcare providers and administrators interpret and apply policy in real-world settings.
Lived Experience
How asylum seekers navigate the system, including barriers, delays, and strategies for accessing care.
Narratives of Deservingness
How broader ideas about entitlement and belonging influence decisions, policies, and institutional behaviour.
Format
The Roundtable is designed as a facilitated dialogue. Participants will engage in guided discussion, drawing on both research findings and professional or lived experience. The format encourages exchange across roles and perspectives, with an emphasis on identifying points of alignment and areas of tension.
Key Questions
The discussion is guided by a set of shared questions:
- How does the current system shape access to healthcare for asylum seekers?
- Where do breakdowns occur in practice?
- How do administrative and institutional processes affect care delivery?
- How are decisions made at the frontline, and with what consequences?
- What role do community organizations play in bridging gaps?
- Where are there opportunities for change?
Participants
The Roundtable brings together participants from across the system, including healthcare providers, policymakers, researchers, community organizations, and individuals with lived experience. This multi-perspective approach is essential for understanding how access to care is shaped across different levels of the system.
From Research to Action Workshop
Event Details
Date: April 30, 2026
Time: 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Location: Saint Paul University, Atelier (95 Clegg Street, Ottawa)
This workshop builds on the roundtable discussion by providing a structured space to examine and interpret emerging insights on healthcare access for asylum seekers in Ottawa.
Purpose
The workshop brings together research, policy, practice, and lived experience to support deeper examination of how healthcare access is structured and experienced. It focuses on interpreting findings and gathering informed feedback across perspectives.
Structure
The session moves from shared context to focused discussion, progressing from system-level considerations to institutional practices and lived experience. This structure reflects the research focus on how access to care is shaped across multiple levels of the system.
Core Activities
Participants engage in guided discussion that considers governance and policy context, administrative processes, frontline decision-making, and lived experience. Small-group discussions support more detailed examination of how barriers to care are encountered and understood in practice.
Learning Focus
The workshop focuses on understanding how healthcare inequities are produced through policy frameworks, including the Interim Federal Health Program and provincial healthcare systems, and how these are experienced within institutional and community settings.
Outcomes
The Roundtable is the first step in a two-part process. It generates shared insight into how healthcare access is structured and experienced. These insights are documented and carried forward into the Workshop, where they are translated into more concrete analysis and practical strategies.
The workshop contributes to the research by refining analysis and identifying areas of convergence and divergence across perspectives. It supports a more grounded understanding of how access to healthcare is structured and where challenges arise.
Foundation
This workshop builds directly on insights generated in the roundtable discussion and forms part of the broader research and knowledge mobilization process.
Next: Roundtable and Workshop Results