The Nova Scotia Community Socio-Economic Status (SES) Snapshot reports were developed in the context of the Nova Scotia Community Cancer Matrix (NSCCM), a research project funded by Research Nova Scotia and led by Dr. Nathalie Saint-Jacques, senior epidemiologist with the Nova Scotia Health Cancer Care Program. The research aims to study the cancers affecting individual communities. When complete, the work will profile community-level cancer risk and how it relates to the social, material and environmental conditions in which people live.
The work reports on 301 communities, 23 cancer types and 99,000 cancer cases diagnosed over the period of 2001-2017. The goal is to map disparity in cancer risk, identify possible inequities in risk, and understand the disease-prevention potential of Nova Scotia communities. This information can be used to inform the development of an effective, equitable and sustainable cancer-prevention strategy. The work is particularly important in Nova Scotia where the rates of several cancers and prevalence of known risk factors are generally greater than elsewhere in Canada.
The research project will release several knowledge products, the first of which are the Nova Scotia Community Socio-Economic Status (SES) Snapshots reports. These reports provide a window on the SES profile of communities included in each of the 37 NS Health Community Health Boards (CHBs) distributed over four health management zones. Some of the CHBs cross more than one zone, resulting in a total of 42 reports.
Being able to identify, measure and map SES across communities is a critical step towards achieving greater health equity in Nova Scotia.
| Research Team | Advisory Committee |
|---|---|
| Dr. Nathalie Saint-Jacques, Registry & Analytics, Nova Scotia Health Cancer Care Program | Marie Aucoin, North Inverness County Community Health Board |
| Dr. Trevor Dummer, Population & Public Health, University of British Columbia | John M. Garcia, PhD, Member, Community Health Board for Northside The Lakes |
| Dr. Mikiko Terashima, School of Planning, Dalhousie University | Gavin Kennedy, Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources and Renewables |
| Dr. Patrick Brown, Statistical Sciences, University of Toronto | Jong Kim, Dalhousie University |
| Dr. Daniel Rainham, Healthy Population Institute, Dalhousie University | Carole MacLeod, Member, East Cape Breton County Community Health Board |
| Judith Purcell, Cancer Primary Prevention, Nova Scotia Health Cancer Care Program | Gillian Ritcey, Healthy Populations Institute |
This work benefited from an active and engaged Advisory Committee, funding from Research Nova Scotia and support of the Nova Scotia Health Cancer Care Program and Dalhousie University Healthy Populations Institute.
How to cite these reports:
Saint-Jacques N, Ritcey G, Purcell J, Dummer T, Brown PE, Rainham D, Terashima, M. Nova Scotia Community Socio-Economic Status Snapshot. ResearchNS; 2022.