The Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP) provides temporary health coverage for refugees, asylum seekers, and other newcomers in Canada. IFHP is a critical bridge for this group of persistently vulnerable patients who are waiting for provincial health coverage. All healthcare providers can work with IFHP, although many do not, in part due to significant systemic barriers, burnout, and existing health human resource challenges in BC. Healthcare providers across all settings and disciplines are affected including physicians, pharmacists, and other allied health. This problem exists across the entire continuum: lack of training in education, absent practice-supports, and minimal action-oriented research. There is an urgent need and high-impact opportunity to engage with researchers and research users to explore critical gaps in the recruitment, retention, and sustainability of healthcare providers caring for IFHP patients.
This project will strengthen and expand existing relationships between researchers and educators at UBC with healthcare providers with a common goal: to identify research opportunities to support the human resource challenges for IFHP providers. The group will explore tangible, action-oriented, evidence-based research opportunities to improve recruitment, retention, and sustainment of healthcare providers caring for IFHP patients and will accomplish this via 2 primary objectives and supporting activities.
Objective 1: Strengthen existing partnerships and establish new connections
Aug-Sept 2026 activities:
-Hire a healthcare student trainee
-One literature review of existing evidence
-Formalize the project team and recruit members of a project Engagement Committee to advise and provide representation from research and research user groups
Sept-Oct:
-Host a kick-off meeting with the Engagement Committee, determine communication and logistics protocols, identify key informants to include in meetings
-Obtain Research Ethics Board approval
-Three 1-hour hybrid engagement meetings: (1) with IFHP researchers and policy makers, (2) with IFHP research users, clinicians, and service providers, and (3) with individuals from the first 2 meetings together
Objective 2: Explore next steps, opportunities for collaborative research, and translation of evidence into practice
Oct-Nov 2026 activities:
-Wrap-up meeting to review findings, examine themes, commit to an action plan for next steps
-Prepare a final project written report
Additional team members and participating organizations:
Collaborators: Sara Jamshid-nezhad
Team members: Dr. Jeanette Pedersen, Dr. Charles Au, Rince Wong, Adam Shahin