Claire Gwayi-Chore

Claire Gwayi-Chore is a PhD student in the Global Health Implementation Science program in the Department of Global Health, School of Public Health. She is a global health specialist with nearly ten years of experience implementing large-scale school- and community-based interventions within impact evaluation settings in low- and middle-income countries. Her current research interest is implementation science, which studies strategies that facilitate the uptake of evidence-based practice into routine use by policy makers as well as public health and clinical practitioners.

Claire aims to evaluate systemic barriers and facilitators to health care access by francophone Africans within Canada’s Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP), which provides health care coverage to all asylum-seeking refugees. IFHP and Canada’s wider refugee policies have received global acclaim for their inclusivity, as promoted by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. However, the lack of evidence surrounding the understanding of systemic barriers that refugees experience to accessing primary health care is a major threat to the health of this vulnerable population. As an immigrant from Kenya, this issue is of personal importance to Claire, and her choice of study stems from her fascination with the current agenda set forth by Canada’s administration that prioritizes the health and safety of all refugees entering the country.

This research reflects Claire’s career goals of using implementation science to provide community-driven evidence to shape effective public health policy and practice. For Claire, learning French has transformed how she envisions advancing her career; she has extended her goals to include collaborations with public health researchers and implementers who work in, with or on behalf of francophone citizens across the globe.