L’accessibilité aux services et aux équipements : un enjeu d’équité pour les personnes âgées résidant en HLM à Montréal

L’accessibilité aux services et aux équipements collectifs est un enjeu important pour les personnes âgées résidant dans le parc HLM. Cela l’est d’autant que, souvent, la précarité économique de ces personnes réduit passablement leur mobilité, déjà faible en raison de leur position dans le cycle de vie. Dans le cadre de cet article, nous évaluons l’accessibilité aux services et aux équipements collectifs de cette clientèle du parc HLM à partir d’une méthodologie reposant sur les systèmes d’information géographique et sur des méthodes de statistique exploratoire multidimensionnelle. L’indicateur d’accessibilité ainsi construit montre qu’il existe huit types de paysages d’équipements autour des immeubles HLM montréalais où réside majoritairement une clientèle âgée. Nos résultats montrent que, globalement, 42 % des aînés qui vivent dans des logements publics montréalais regroupant une majorité de personnes âgées, ont un bon ou très bon accès aux ressources urbaines alors que pour 58 % d’entre eux, l’accès est plus limité.For elderly people living in public housing, whose mobility is often reduced due to their stage in the life cycle and their economic resources, the accessibility to services and facilities is a fundamental concern. In this paper, we evaluate the accessibility to various services and facilities for this clientele by using a methodological approach based on geographical information systems and multivariate analysis. Our results based on the calculation of an accessibility indicator show that there are eight facilities landscapes around public housing buildings where live a majority of elderly residents. Overall, 42% of elderly residents of public housings have a good level of accessibility to urban resources, against 58% who have a more limited accessibilit

Cogentrification sociale et économique : La colocalisation de la main-d’oeuvre et des emplois de services aux entreprises à Montréal, 1996-2001

Plusieurs études se sont penchées sur l’évolution de la localisation des emplois de services aux entreprises. Une hypothèse qui n’a pas encore été pleinement explorée est celle selon laquelle ce secteur chercherait à s’implanter à proximité des quartiers résidentiels où réside sa main-d’oeuvre. Notre étude démontre qu’il semble effectivement y avoir une certaine colocalisation, mais que celle-ci affecte principalement la main-d’oeuvre résidant à proximité du centre-ville. Ici, on trouve que les nouveaux emplois de services aux entreprises tendent à se localiser à proximité des quartiers déjà habités par leurs employés. Ceci nous permet d’avancer l’hypothèse d’une cogentrification : d’abord résidentielle, alors que certains professionnels se sont, depuis une vingtaine d’années, réapproprié des quartiers péricentraux de Montréal. Ensuite économique, tandis que les emplois de bureau en services aux entreprises se sont localisés vers ces mêmes quartiers.Many studies are currently investigating the localization of business services jobs and its development. One hypothesis, which has been insufficiently researched to date, is that this sector tends to locate in the vicinity of residential neighbourhoods where its workforce lives. This study demonstrates that though colocalization does exist to some extent, it mainly affects workers living close to the downtown area. It has been discovered that new business services jobs tend to locate in close proximity to areas already inhabited by employees in the business services sector. We can therefore hypothesize that cogentrification is primarily residential. A number of professional workers have returned to live in Montreal’s pericentral neighbourhoods over the past twenty years. Cogentrification is also economic, insofar as business services office jobs have gravitated toward these same areas during the same period

Turtle Sport: An Open-Source Software for Communicating with GPS Sport Watches

The aim of this article is to introduce an open-source software—Turtle Sport—that is capable of automatically importing the GPS traces of several types of GPS sport watches (Garmin, Polar, Suunto, Timex, TomTom, etc.) or of importing a number of GPS files. The GPS data are also uploaded locally to the researcher’s computer workstation, and not to Cloud, which may raise important ethical issues. Turtle Sport also allows users to: manage a number of users; visualize the traces and statistics for the races; and export the traces to external files (GPX, KML). Developed in Java, Turtle Sport is a stand-alone, multiplatform (Windows, Mac and Linux) and multi-language (11 languages supported) application. The software is available under GNU LGPL 2.1 Licence on SourceForge (https://sourceforge.net/projects/turtlesport/).   Funding statement: The publication of the paper was supported by the Canada Research Chair in Environmental Equity (950-230813)

The case of Montréal's missing food deserts: Evaluation of accessibility to food supermarkets

BACKGROUND: Access to varied, healthy and inexpensive foods is an important public health concern that has been widely documented. Consequently, there is an increasing interest in identifying food deserts, that is, socially deprived areas within cities that have poor access to food retailers. In this paper we propose a methodology based on three measures of accessibility to supermarkets calculated using geographic information systems (GIS), and on exploratory multivariate statistical analysis (hierarchical cluster analysis), which we use to identify food deserts in Montréal. RESULTS: First, the use of three measures of accessibility to supermarkets is very helpful in identifying food deserts according to several dimensions: proximity (distance to the nearest supermarket), diversity (number of supermarkets within a distance of less than 1000 metres) and variety in terms of food and prices (average distance to the three closest different chain-name supermarkets). Next, the cluster analysis applied to the three measures of accessibility to supermarkets and to a social deprivation index demonstrates that there are very few problematic food deserts in Montréal. In fact, census tracts classified as socially deprived and with low accessibility to supermarkets are, on average, 816 metres away from the nearest supermarket and within 1.34 kilometres of three different chain-name supermarkets. CONCLUSION: We conclude that food deserts do not represent a major problem in Montréal. Since geographic accessibility to healthy food is not a major issue in Montréal, prevention efforts should be directed toward the understanding of other mechanisms leading to an unhealthy diet, rather than attempting to promote an even spatial distribution of supermarkets

Mobilité transfrontalière et itinéraire thérapeutique des Haïtiennes et des Haïtiens de la région de Ouanaminthe

Cette étude aborde la mobilité thérapeutique transfrontalière entre deux pays à faibles revenus, Haïti et la République dominicaine. L’objectif est d’explorer les logiques qui sous-tendent la recherche de soins des Haïtiens et Haïtiennes résidant dans la ville frontalière de Ouanaminthe. En plus de cerner les motivations du recours transfrontalier aux soins de santé, l’étude qualitative propose de le situer dans l’itinéraire thérapeutique. Vingt et un entretiens semi-dirigés auprès de patientes et patients ont été menés dans deux cliniques privées et un hôpital public à Dajabón (République dominicaine). Sept entretiens ont aussi été menés avec des cliniciens et gestionnaires. Ces récits révèlent que la recherche d’efficacité et de qualité, la relation patient/médecin et le temps d’attente interviennent dans la décision de se faire soigner en République dominicaine. Le cheminement thérapeutique des patientes et patients n’est pas linéaire, mais fait de va-et-vient, selon les besoins, entre deux systèmes de santé originellement disjoints.Background On 16 September 2017, 40 Haitian, including 15 pregnant Haitian women, were arrested at the Dominican border and repatriated. This information relayed by the Haitian press echoes those published by some Dominican newspapers, which repeatedly denounce the care provided by Dominican public hospitals to Haitian patients and its impact on the health care system. Nevertheless, very few studies in Haiti or the Dominican Republic have addressed this issue even though several authors have pointed out the existence of health care related cross-border mobility. Moreover, the reasons for such mobility are rarely analyzed. For some, the lack of services in Haiti and free access to health care in the Dominican Republic are identified as the main drivers for such behavior. Yet crossing the border (even at official entry points) is not always easy for Haitians. Our paper asks: what then are the driving factors that lead to cross-border health care seeking? At what point in the therapeutic itinerary is such a decision made? Evidence from studies on transnational health related mobility indicates that availability, affordability, accessibility, familiarity and perception of service quality play a role in the decision-making. Furthermore, in a context of proximity with the border, attractiveness of care can polarize the flows in a push/pull dynamics. Several studies also highlight the importance of social networks and ethnolinguistic factors in the decision to travel or return to their country of origin after care has been sought. Dissatisfaction with local services and hope for better care are also among the identified driving factors. This lead to complex and sinuous therapeutic paths within and outside one’s country. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the rationale behind the health-related cross-border mobility of Haitians living in or near the border town of Ouanaminthe, Haiti. The driving factors will also be identified and cross-border health utilization will be contextualized within the overall therapeutic itinerary. Methods This descriptive qualitative study used several combined methods, namely observation and semi-directive interviews. Overall, 28 interviews were carried out (21 patients, 7 Dominican and Haitian clinicians or decision makers). The interviews with cross-border patients focused mainly on their therapeutic itinerary, the motives behind this decision, obstacles encountered and their perceptions of the quality of care received both in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Interviews with the clinicians and decision makers helped gathered information on health care facilities, their attendance by Haitian clients and the existing collaboration or system of medical referral between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. An iterative thematic analysis process was conducted. First, a pre-coding based and initial thematic categories inspired from the literature was used. From this process, other thematic categories have emerged, pointing to context specific issues. Findings Patients’ cross-border health seeking is not linear, but rather a back and forth process between two separate health care systems. For some participants, it lasts several years, while for others, it leads to a first visit. The results show that visiting different health care facilities for the same health problem (or evolving symptoms over time) is usual. Having a second opinion is a frequently reported reason (for both patients and clinicians). The study also shows that cross-border health seeking requires participants to mobilize various skills such as familiarity with the health care system, border crossing experience and abilities, and knowledge of the Dominican language. Respondents also emphasized three main issues related to the Haitian health system that led them to cross-border for health care in the Dominican Republic: 1) the search for efficiency and service quality; 2) the poor patient/clinician relationship; 3) excessive waiting times. Furthermore, the importance of social networks and the strategies used to overcome language barrier is striking. Both clinicians and patients implement different strategies to enable appropriate care. Participants also underlined the important financial burden required to seek treatment abroad. Conclusion The cross-border health-related mobility practices observed in Ouanaminthe have many similarities with those analyzed in other contexts. Some aspects have been highlighted but need to be deepened to gain a better understanding of the health-seeking behavior as well as the strategies in place to cope with the expenses. An in-depth understanding of individual behaviors and strategies can help in the definition of public health policies and the development of a framework for a bilateral cooperation that takes into account cross-border health mobility practices and the thorny issue of migration

VIFECO: An Open-Source Software for Counting Features on a Video

The aim of this article is to describe an open-source application (Vifeco) that makes it possible to manually identify features on a video. Vifeco also allows to: manage the number of users, create a category (feature) and a collection of categories, read video and identify the features on it, and analyze the counting concordance between two users. Written in Java 11 with the JavaFX UI toolkit, Vifeco is a stand-alone, multiplatform (Windows, Mac and Linux) and multi-language (3 languages supported) application. The software is available under Apache Licence on GitHub ('https://github.com/LAEQ/vifeco')

Cross-border mobility and therapeutic itinerary of Haitians in the Ouanaminthe region

Background On 16 September 2017, 40 Haitian, including 15 pregnant Haitian women, were arrested at the Dominican border and repatriated. This information relayed by the Haitian press echoes those published by some Dominican newspapers, which repeatedly denounce the care provided by Dominican public hospitals to Haitian patients and its impact on the health care system. Nevertheless, very few studies in Haiti or the Dominican Republic have addressed this issue even though s..

Optimizing the two-step floating catchment area method for measuring spatial accessibility to medical clinics in Montreal

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Reducing spatial access disparities to healthcare services is a growing priority for healthcare planners especially among developed countries with aging populations. There is thus a pressing need to determine which populations do not enjoy access to healthcare, yet efforts to quantify such disparities in spatial accessibility have been hampered by a lack of satisfactory measurements and methods. This study compares an optimised and the conventional version of the two-step floating catchment area (2SFCA) method to assess spatial accessibility to medical clinics in Montreal.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We first computed catchments around existing medical clinics of Montreal Island based on the shortest network distance. Population nested in dissemination areas were used to determine potential users of a given medical clinic. To optimize the method, medical clinics (supply) were weighted by the number of physicians working in each clinic, while the previous year's medical clinic users were computed by ten years age group was used as weighting coefficient for potential users of each medical clinic (demand).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The spatial accessibility score (SA) increased considerably with the optimisation method. Within a distance of 1 Km, for instance, the maximum clinic accessible for 1,000 persons is 2.4 when the conventional method is used, compared with 27.7 for the optimized method. The t-test indicates a significant difference between the conventional and the optimized 2SFCA methods. Also, results of the differences between the two methods reveal a clustering of residuals when distance increases. In other words, a low threshold would be associated with a lack of precision.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Results of this study suggest that a greater effort must be made ameliorate spatial accessibility to medical clinics in Montreal. To ensure that health resources are allocated in the interest of the population, health planners and the government should consider a strategy in the sitting of future clinics which would provide spatial access to the greatest number of people.</p