Access to healthcare services among heterosexual Black men in Ontario, Canada

Abstract

While there is a growing body of literature on Black people’s access to HIV services in Canada, the question of how this access varies across Canada’s urban jurisdictions has hitherto never arisen in research and policy. This paper assesses HIV healthcare needs among heterosexual Black men in four Ontario cities of Windsor, London, Toronto and Ottawa. Multivariate results show that heterosexual Black men in Windsor (OR = 3.2; p < .01), London (OR = 2.5; p < .05), and Toronto (OR = 2.2; p < .05) were significantly more likely to experience difficulties getting HIV healthcare compared with those living in the nation’s capital—Ottawa. Also, experiences of discrimination (OR = 1.08; p < .001), not having a family doctor (OR = 1.7; p < .01) and difficulty with the English language (OR = 2.4; p < .01) predicted higher odds of difficulty accessing HIV health needs. These findings suggest that contextually sensitive policies within Canadian cities are needed to help marginalized populations meet their healthcare needs.

Keywords:

• Access to healthcare
• cities
• heterosexual Black men
• HIV vulnerabilities
• Ontario
• Canada

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethical approval

And ethics was granted by the Non-medical Research Ethics Boards of the Non-Medical Research Ethics boards of Ryerson University, University of Windsor, University of Ottawa and Western University and each site rigorously adhered to the protocols.

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research [#FRN 138354] and the Ontario HIV treatment Network [#1052], Canada. However, the ideas, design, data collection, analysis and interpretation of findings and the decision to submit the article for publication are of the authors.