QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS 

A quantitative data analysis was conducted by the OCEEH collaborative, and is available in the document The Quantitative Data on the Resources page. Much of the data was collected from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Community Health Surveys of 2005 and 2010, though some other sources of interest were also used. The extraction and analysis of the data for Ontario was another ‘first-ever.’

In addition to the statistics related to the numbers of persons diagnosed with these conditions, their breakdown by age, gender and multi-morbidity gathered in the report, a number of other issues were examined, and important conclusions emerged. Among these:

KEY FINDINGS

General

  • The CELCs are widespread and overlapping and have the potential to negatively impact people’s lives from a very early age
  • They are most common among the middle-aged, whereas other chronic conditions tend to strike at a later age – this has major implications for financial viability
  • ES/MCS, FM and ME/CFS also occur among younger children and teenagers
  • The majority of sufferers are women – major implications for parenting, family cohesiveness, poverty and respect from health care professionals
  • A significant number of men (roughly 20 to 30 percent of patients) also have the conditions (possibly under-reported).

Functional Impairment

Measures of functional impairment indicate that people with ES/MCS, FM and/or ME/CFS are at least as disabled and in some cases more disabled than people with other well-known serious chronic conditions.

Unmet health care needs

The levels of unmet health care needs were greater than for our comparator groups.

Combined with unmet home care needs (group receiving least home care services), people with these conditions are receiving ineffective care and/or are experiencing greater barriers to care in general, and relative to comparator groups.

Socioeconomic disadvantages

High levels of moderate or severe food insecurity, and sizeable proportions with low annual household income, show socioeconomic disadvantage greater than for comparator groups.

The qualitative data from our community consultation corroborated and augmented all these findings in the quantitative data.

To find out more read the full report.