About Our LHIN
LHINs reflect the idea that communities know their own health needs and priorities best. To achieve our goals, we’re engaging with our communities, and working to develop strong, positive relationships with individuals and groups who have a stake in our health care system. This helps us respond to the unique needs of our diverse communities and support local decision-making.
Our activities and investments are also informed by what we know about the people who live in our LHIN – such as ethnicity, average age, income and education level – and the overall health of our population.
Three key population trends continue to feature prominently for Central LHIN: growth, aging and diversity.
Central LHIN is both the most populous and one of the fastest growing LHINs in the province. More than 1.7 million people now live in Central LHIN, and our estimated population growth rate is 19.2% over the next 10 years (12.6% Ontario rate).
Click to find out more about our mix of urban and rural communities.
Greater-than-average aging creates increasing demand for care and services
Central LHIN will experience greater-than-average population aging over the next 10 years, with the 65+ age category projected to grow from 204,139 to 285,555. That’s an additional 81,416 seniors, or a 40% increase. In comparison, the whole province projects a 33% increase in the number of seniors aged 65+ over that same period.
Both growth and aging are issues that pose significant challenges for our health service providers as they work to meet the ever-increasing demand for care and services.
More diverse by the day
Central LHIN has the highest proportion of immigrants in the province, almost twice the provincial average of visible minorities and hence a higher percentage – compared to the province – of people whose mother tongue is not French or English.
A full 48 % percent of our residents are immigrants and 42 % identify themselves as visible minorities.
Aboriginal and Francophone communities
Central LHIN has a relatively small presence of Aboriginal/First Nations within our LHIN – about 0.4 % of our population.
In the summer of 2009, a new, more inclusive definition of Francophone was adopted by the province. As a result, Francophones are now defined as including those whose mother tongue is neither French or English but who speak French at home or who come from a place where French is an official language.
This change in the definition potentially increases the current proportion of Francophones in our LHIN from approximately 1% to approximately 3.2%.
Overall, North Toronto, Markham and Vaughan are the areas where we face the greatest challenges providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services for diverse communities.
How planning areas help us to meet local needs
As one way to aid in our planning activities at a local level, Central LHIN divided its geography into seven planning areas, ranging in population from slightly more than 113,257 (South Simcoe, Northern York Region) to 465,683 (South East York Region). These areas have varying age structures, economic conditions, and social characteristics.
Because Central LHIN’s planning areas are so different, each has their own unique challenges and needs that must be considered when planning at a system level. Our Population Factors by Planning Area table illustrates some key population factors for each planning area.
Health Profile
Examining Central LHIN’s health profile helps us work towards our priority goal of reducing health disparities and ensuring equitable access to health care in our LHIN by identifying populations that would benefit from focused initiatives.
Generally, our residents have a lower incidence of chronic diseases and conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and asthma than that of Ontario as a whole. However, social determinants of health, such as unemployment, education levels and risk behaviours such as smoking and obesity, have all been shown to affect how healthy people are.
Within our planning areas there are variations in health status due to the differences in these characteristics.
According to the Canadian Institute of Health Research, high risk populations are groups of people that share characteristics – such as homelessness, single women living in poverty or lone-parent families – associated with high risk of adverse health outcomes.
Two of our planning areas – South Simcoe / Northern York Region and North York West – have been identified as high risk from a population health standpoint. A higher number of the residents in these two planning areas face serious chronic diseases, as well as obstacles to accessing primary care, compared to other planning areas in the LHIN.
These two planning areas will be the focus of targeted initiatives through our health equity priority.
As the population ages, more LHIN residents will develop chronic diseases and will experience greater health service needs. Chronic disease conditions place a high burden on the health care system and reduce quality of life. As such, Central LHIN has selected chronic disease management and prevention as a planning priority to support the province’s diabetes strategy and, where possible, will also leverage new resources and initiatives to address other chronic diseases.
More detailed demographics and other information on the health of Central LHIN residents is available in our Health Needs Assessment and Gap Analysis Report (SNAGA).