What is the long-term health trajectory for children in foster homes?
A new Canadian data resource is helping researchers investigate the long-term health outcomes of children who have experienced foster care, providing an opportunity to better understand their healthcare needs and the factors that may protect their health.
The Canadian Children in Foster Homes (CanFos) data resource, published in the International Journal of Population Data Science (IJPDS), links health and mortality data with national Canadian Census records.
With Census data linked at five-year intervals, researchers can compare multiple cohorts across different time periods. Each cohort includes between 20,000 and 30,000 Canadian children in foster homes, providing the scale and depth of data needed to investigate a wide range of health outcomes across different demographic groups and compare them with those of other Canadians.
CanFos is the first national cohort of children involved in child welfare in Canada and, according to the researchers, the first internationally to combine detailed demographic information, including Indigeneity and ethnicity, and longitudinal health outcome data at a national level. This makes it a valuable resource for international research, where national data on this population is severely lacking.
Health data are available from 2000 onwards, allowing researchers to investigate healthcare use, including emergency department visits and hospitalizationsalongside physical and mental health, pregnancy, substance useand mortality.
The data resource showshigher numbers of hospitalisations and deaths among people with foster home experience compared to all other Canadians.
Beyond documenting these differences, CanFos offers opportunities to investigate the demographic, economic and community factors that may influence health outcomes. By examining patterns of emergency department use, hospitalisation and premature mortality, researchers may be able to identify protective factors and better understand where additional support is needed.
The research team works with Indigenous agencies and communities and upholds Indigenous data sovereignty principles that guide the governance, access, and management of Indigenous data.
Researchers can access microdata through Statistics Canada’s secure access arrangements. Those interested in the CanFos First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Advisory Circle, or in accessing the data, can contact the CanFos team.
“Every hospitalisation and every early death is part of a larger story,” says data resource lead Dr Evans. “Population-level data linkages across sectors such as in CanFos can show us how we can help young people before they require hospital care.”
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Andrea Evans, MSc, MDCM, Attending Staff, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO), Assistant Professor, Faculty of Medicine and School of Epidemiology and Public Health, CHEO Research Institute, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada