Primary healthcare access is one of the crucial factors that ensures the health and well-being of a population. Immigrant/racialised communities encounter a myriad of barriers to accessing primary healthcare. As global migration continues to grow, the development and practice of effective strategies for research and policy regarding primary care access are warranted. Many studies have attempted to identify the barriers to primary care access and recommend solutions. However, top-down approaches where the researchers and policy-makers ‘prescribe’ solutions are more common than community-engaged approaches where community members and researchers work hand-in-hand in community-engaged research to identify the problems, codevelop solutions and recommend policy changes. In this article, we reflect on a comprehensive community-engaged research approach that we undertook to identify the barriers to equitable primary care access among a South Asian (Bangladeshi) immigrant community in Canada. This article summarised the experience of our programme of research and describes our understanding of community-engaged research among an immigrant/racialised community that meaningfully interacts with the community. In employing the principles of community-based participatory research, integrated knowledge translation and human centred design, we reflect on the comprehensive community-engaged research approach we undertook. We believe that our reflections can be useful to academics while conducting community-engaged research on relevant issues across other immigrant/racialised communities.

Researchers need to observe complex problems from various angles and contexts to create workable, effective and sustainable solutions. For complex societal problems, including health and socioeconomic disparities, cross-sectoral collaborative research is crucial. It allows for meaningful interaction between various actors around a particular real-world problem through a process of mutual learning. This collaboration builds a sustainable, trust-based partnership among the stakeholders and allows for a thorough understanding of the problem through a solution-oriented lens. While the created knowledge benefits the community, the community is generally less involved in the research process. Often, community members are engaged to collect data or for consultancy and knowledge dissemination; however, they are not involved in the actual research process, for example, developing a research question and using research tools such as conducting focus groups, analysis and interpretation. To be involved on these levels, there is a need for building community capacity for research. However, due to a lack of funds, resources and interest in building capacity on the part of both researchers and the community, deeper and meaningful involvement of community members in research becomes less viable. In this article, we reflect on how we have designed our programme of research—from involving community members at different levels of the research process to building capacity with them. We describe the activities community members participated in based on their needs and capacity. Capacity-building strategies for each level of involvement with the community members are also outlined.

Introduction: Immigrants continue to face significant challenges in accessing primary healthcare (PHC) that often negatively impact their health. The present research aims to capture the perspectives of immigrants to identify potential approaches to enhance PHC access for this group. Methods: Focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted among a sample of first-generation Bangladeshi immigrants who had experience with PHC in Canada. A total of 13 FGDs (7 among women, 6 among men) were conducted with 80 participants (women = 42, men = 38) in their preferred language, Bangla. We collected demographic information prior to each focus group and used descriptive statistics to identify the socio-demographic characteristics of participants. We applied thematic analysis to examine qualitative data to generate a list of themes of possible approaches to improve PHC access. Results: The focus group findings identified different levels of approaches to improve PHC access: individual-, community-, service provider-, and policy-level. Individual-level approaches included increased self-awareness of health and wellness and personal knowledge of cultural differences in healthcare services and improved communication skills. At the community level, supports for community members to access care included health education workshops, information sessions, and different support programs (eg, carpool services for senior members). Suggested service-level approaches included providers taking necessary steps to ensure an effective doctor-patient relationship with immigrants (eg, strategies to promote cultural competencies, hiring multicultural staff). FGD participants also raised the importance of government- or policy-level solutions to ensure high quality of care (eg, increased after-hour clinics and lab/diagnostic services). Conclusions: Although barriers to immigrants accessing healthcare are well documented in the literature, solutions to address them are under-researched. To improve healthcare access, physicians, community health centers, local health agencies, and public health units should collaborate with members of immigrant communities to identify appropriate interventions.

Research around probable solutions to immigrants accessing health care in Canada is not extensive, and the perspective of immigrant communities on priorities and potential solutions has not been captured effectively. The purpose of this article is to describe a research initiative that involved grassroots community members as producers of research priorities on primary care access issues. This study aimed to seek input from an immigrant community in Calgary, Canada. Members of the Bangladeshi community of Calgary were asked through a survey to rank 10 predefined primary care access topics as to what they felt constituted priorities for solution-oriented research (1, highest; 10, lowest). We used frequencies and percentages to describe the participant demographics. Ratings of preferred research themes were analyzed on the basis of relative weighted priority rank. We received 432 responses: 51.2% female; 58.9% aged 36 to 55 years; 90.5% had university-level education; 46.2% immigrated to Canada between 10 and 19 years ago; 82.5% employed full/part-time or self-employed. Lack of resources, lack of knowledge, health care cost, and workplace-related barriers were among the top-ranked topics identified as solution-oriented research priorities. Through partnerships and reciprocal learning, public input can increase insider perspectives to help develop interventions that align with the needs of community members.