Sarah Muthee, project development lead, equity data, and Karen Phillips, provincial epidemiologist with the Department of Health and Wellness, at their offices in Charlottetown, PEI.The Globe and Mail
Prince Edward Island will become the latest province to ask residents to volunteer information about their race and ethnicity when renewing their health cards, a move that experts praised as a way to address inequities in health care.
The province will launch the project next month with the goals of better understanding differences in health outcomes, flagging gaps in care and improving services.
The 2021 Canadian census found that racialized and ethnically diverse residents made up nearly 12 per cent of the island’s population.
Karen Phillips, provincial epidemiologist with PEI’s Department of Health and Wellness, said in an interview that the information gathered will be vital to monitor and identify health inequities that stem from bias and racism. It will also “inform interventions to improve health equity and health care access, quality, experience and outcomes,” Dr. Phillips added.
PEI’s approach aligns with a long-standing request from several health experts who have called on jurisdictions to collect race-based information through the health card renewal or application process.
2023: Advocates urge collection of race-based data via health cards to address inequities
In the fall of 2022, Nova Scotia began collecting voluntary race and linguistic data in health care.
The following year, a group of researchers wrote in an article published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that data available on race could allow inequities to be measured.
They also said doing so could allow organizations and governments to be held accountable for addressing and monitoring progress.
One of the authors, Irfan Dhalla, a general internal medicine physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, said PEI appears to be proceeding with its data collection in a thoughtful way.
“We have gaps in our knowledge when it comes to understanding whether different groups of people get treated similarly in the health care system,” he said. “It’s difficult to improve if we don’t know where we stand.”
He urged every province and territory to collect these data and engage with communities that experience the biggest gaps in access to health care and outcomes.
The extent of bias that exists in health care is unclear. A 2021 study from Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health found that Black patients were restrained 44 per cent more often than white patients.
“A lot of times we hear in health care, people say, ‘I treat everybody the same,’” Dr. Dhalla said. “But we don’t have the data to actually confirm that we treat people the same or, even more importantly, that we treat people in the way that they need to be treated.”
2023: Anti-racism policies in health care should be led by Indigenous staff, report says
As part of its project, PEI has been consulting with residents who identify as Black, Indigenous or racialized.
Sarah Muthee, who is leading the development and data collection for PEI’s project, said race and ethnicity data will not be featured on the provincial health card nor will they be added to patients’ medical charts.
Instead, the data are being gathered to allow PEI to track where health services are not functioning the same for patients, to offer information for the design of future programs and services to meet the needs of diverse communities, and to track progress for accountability purposes.
In 2023, Manitoba began voluntarily collecting race-based data from patients registering for medical care.
The province said its approach was a response to a call from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that examined the effects of residential schools in Canada. The TRC urged governments to identify and close gaps in health outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.
In June, 2025, Manitoba’s health authority, the University of Manitoba’s Ongomiizwin – Indigenous Institute of Health and Healing and the George & Fay Yee Centre for Healthcare Innovation said an initial analysis showed racism can be a factor that affects wait times and care in emergency departments.
After the finding was released, Marcia Anderson, who leads the project on behalf of the provincial health authority, said the data are critical to accurately measure health disparities. Dr. Anderson is also the vice-dean of Indigenous health, social justice and anti-racism at the University of Manitoba.
“The collection, analysis and actions we take as a result are vital in our efforts to eliminate racism and discrimination of any kind, and improve our health system for all.”