Navigating Alberta's Healthcare System: A Resource for Newcomers, Immigrants, and Refugees

The Calgary Asian Medical Students' Association (CAMSA) is a student group at the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine, founded by Lucy Yang, Yvette Ysabel Yao, and Breanna Fang (Class of 2025), and handed down to Lexyn Iliscupidez and Claire Song, the current co-presidents and medical students from the Class of 2026. CAMSA values diverse Asian populations in medicine and recognizes the disparities faced by both professionals and patients as part of being a visible minority. Our student group aims to build a sense of community, celebrate Asian cultures through social events, advocate for Asian and immigrant health in Calgary, provide mentorship for current and pre-medical students, and organize other service and professional events. We also aim to raise awareness of lesser-known traditional medicines, health disparities, and cultural health beliefs in Asian communities.

CAMSA recognizes that navigating healthcare in a new country can be challenging, especially for individuals unfamiliar with the system and those who may not speak English as their first language. In response, we created an informative step-by-step pamphlet that breaks down essential steps for accessing healthcare services in Alberta. 

The first step of the pamphlet reflects the first step in accessing public healthcare services: applying for an Alberta health care card. The pamphlet directs readers to the Alberta government AHCIP application website, which concisely outlines the steps of how to apply. Next, the pamphlet breaks down the different options for accessing healthcare services in Alberta, depending on what healthcare needs have to be addressed. This aspect can be especially confusing for those who may not know of the roles and scope of family doctors, walk-in clinics, primary care networks and emergency services. This ties in to the next step, finding a family doctor. As we all know too well, finding a family doctor in Alberta can be difficult. This process is just as challenging for newcomers, as the process of getting a family doctor differs from country to country and they may not know how to do so in Canada. We have included two resources newcomers can use when seeking a family doctor: https://albertafindadoctor.ca or calling 811. Providing these resources will hopefully facilitate families in finding a family doctor, who is vital for ongoing and preventative care.

Another potential area of confusion that newcomers may face is understanding what services are covered by public healthcare, because similar to finding family doctors, this is an aspect of healthcare that greatly varies between countries. We wanted to clearly distinguish these services so that newcomers may plan ahead for services not covered by the standard Alberta Healthcare plan and those that may require private insurance coverage to help avoid unforeseen healthcare costs.

Overall, our pamphlet emphasizes self-advocacy in healthcare. This can be daunting for newcomers who are entering a new and unfamiliar setting. We encourage newcomers, immigrants and refugees to seek more information if they have questions or concerns, vocalize urgent needs such as pain, and to ask for spiritual and emotional support as well as translation services if that makes them more comfortable. By giving newcomers the tools they need to navigate Alberta’s healthcare system, we are taking a step towards patient-centered care.

Over the last few years, we have collaborated with our team to complete the research, outreach and design for the pamphlet. More recently, we are excited to have completed the feedback and translation stage of our project. This involved hosting focus groups with organizations that provide social services to newcomers, immigrants, and refugees, such as The Immigrant Education Society and Calgary Catholic Immigration Society. Language is a major barrier to accessing healthcare, so we wanted to ensure that our resource had the biggest reach possible. With help from CCIS’s translation services and our kind and brilliant UofC MD classmates, we were able to translate our English pamphlet into Ukrainian, Arabic, Tigriynia, Dari, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, and Farsi, languages that our community partners recognized as the most common. We’re proud that this pamphlet is accessible to a wide range of communities and can help bridge language gaps that often exist in healthcare systems.

We are currently in the process of distributing the pamphlet across Calgary via the Primary Care Networks. Ultimately, our goal is to expand its distribution throughout Alberta and to have it translated to even more languages. The more widely the pamphlet is distributed, the greater its impact will be in helping newcomers feel empowered about their health and confident in their ability to navigate the healthcare system.

This pamphlet was made possible by a generous grant from the AMA. We hope that this resource will help newcomers, immigrants, and refugees in understanding our healthcare system and empower them to advocate for their health needs.