As part of its ongoing commitment to social accountability, AFMC is helping develop Bilingual Digital Pathways, a national bilingual digital platform designed to help Black Canadians more easily find, navigate and connect with existing resources and services related to substance use, addictions, mental health and related care.
While meaningful services and resources already exist across Canada, they can be fragmented, difficult to navigate and not equally accessible to the communities that need them.
Supported by $630,000 in funding from Health Canada through the Substance Use and Addictions Program, the project is advancing in partnership with the AFMC Committee on Black Health, Innovation and Advancement (CoBHIA). CoBHIA brings together Black leaders in Canadian medical education to advance social justice, address systemic barriers, and promote inclusive and equitable healthcare environments.
The Health Equity and Systems Transformation Innovation Lab (HEST-IL) at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine is an innovation-to-impact platform that advances health equity through systems transformation. HEST-IL brings together community-informed research and innovation, implementation science, evaluation, responsible AI and digital technologies, and decision intelligence to co-design, test, translate and scale practical solutions to complex health and health-system challenges.
In collaboration with the RESTORE Network and ResearchAlly, HEST-IL is bringing these capabilities to the development and evaluation of Bilingual Digital Pathways.
Community partnership is foundational to the initiative. Community partners and individuals with lived and living experience will help inform the platform’s design and development so that it responds to real-world needs, experiences and barriers.
Rather than creating another set of services, Bilingual Digital Pathways is intended to make existing resources easier to find, understand and navigate, while helping individuals and providers identify appropriate pathways to care. In doing so, the initiative aims to reduce fragmentation and improve equitable access to substance use, addictions and mental health supports for Black communities across Canada.
Bilingual Digital Pathways is expected to launch in 2027.
“Black Canadians seeking substance use, addictions or mental health support too often encounter a fragmented system that was not designed with them in mind. Equity must be non-negotiable. This project aims to address a critical gap in navigating Canada’s health and social-care systems.”
“Working alongside CoBHIA, HEST-IL and community partners, we are building Bilingual Digital Pathways—a national bilingual digital platform designed to help put culturally relevant information and pathways to appropriate care within reach for individuals seeking help and for the providers working to connect them to it. Meaningful resources and services already exist.”
“Our goal is not simply to create more, but to reduce fragmentation, make those resources easier to navigate and improve equitable access.” said Kannin Osei-Tutu, Inaugural Chair, CoBHIA; Inaugural Senior Associate Dean, Health Equity and Systems Transformation, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary; Founder and Director, HEST Innovation Lab; and Co-Principal Investigator, Bilingual Digital Pathways.