Equitable Epilepsy Care for Patients in Northern Ontario & First Nations | Dr. Carter Snead [Video]

A founding goal of Project ECHO Epilepsy Ontario is to help increase understanding of and access to, the life changing benefits of epilepsy surgery to patients across Ontario. Since launching in 2016, we’ve had significant success in meeting this goal through the implementation of the provincial Epilepsy Strategy, of which Project ECHO Epilepsy Ontario is a key medical education program player. And yet there’s still so much more work to be done.

Most concerning are the issues of equitable access to epilepsy care for patients in the northern and rural regions of Ontario and to First Nations populations. A 2018 study by University of Saskatchewan researchers discovered that epilepsy is two times more prevalent in Indigenous populations in Canada than in non-Indigenous Canadians BUT the Indigenous only represent 5% of patients benefiting from access to epilepsy surgery. *

As the CBC article on the study noted, lead researcher Jose Tellez-Zenteno, a professor at the University of Saskatchewan College of Medicine, said “research in Saskatchewan shows 95 per cent of people getting the surgery are non-Indigenous. That means that these patients are not having the benefits of epilepsy surgery,” he said, adding more outreach to Indigenous communities is needed.”**

Project ECHO Epilepsy Ontario is an important channel of epilepsy education, awareness and community building amongst healthcare providers who are caring for these communities.

Dr. Carter Snead, world-renowned epileptologist and retired Co-Lead / Founder of Project ECHO Epilepsy Ontario, gave us a parting interview, featured at the tale end of this video, in which he expressed his hopes for the care and service reach of the ECHO Epilepsy program: “My big hope for the future is that we could somehow develop strategies to reach the northern part of the province, in particular First Nations.”

Sources:
* https://news.usask.ca/media-release-pages/2018/incidence-of-epilepsy-in-indigenous-population-double-the-national-average.php
**https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/epilepsy-double-the-national-average-in-first-nations-population-study-1.4696696