Knowledge Hub
Ontario’s crisis response system often relies on police as the first point of contact for people experiencing mental health or substance-related distress. This approach can criminalize individuals instead of addressing the deeper issues—such as poverty, housing insecurity, and discrimination—that shape many crises. Community-led crisis models offer a different path. By centering lived experience, equity, and trauma-informed care, these services provide health and social responses rather than defaulting to law enforcement. With mobile teams, crisis lines, short-term housing supports, and partnerships across sectors, these models create low-barrier, accessible ways for people to seek help.
AI moderation often fails marginalized groups, especially disabled women and girls, because existing datasets ignore their lived experiences, leading to missed abuse, over-censorship, and reinforced bias. Researchers advocate for co-created, intersectional datasets and contextual AI that understands nuance, intent, and transparent explainable systems to build trust. Addressing data scarcity, bias, and accessibility requires community-driven design, continuous feedback, and survivor-centered policies that prioritize safety, accountability, and wellbeing.
The voices of Youth lend an important addition to community research, in every stage from design to dissemination. Centering co-design, training, accessibility, and lived experience ensures marginalized voices are included and systemic barriers are addressed. This approach builds confidence and trust while creating tangible impacts on policy, practice, and community wellbeing.
Current disability supports in Canada keep people surviving, not thriving. Thriving means more than financial security — it includes wellbeing, belonging, autonomy, and growth. Policies must shift from deficit-based to person-centered, expanding real financial supports, ensuring accessibility, and valuing all forms of participation, guided by the voices of people with disabilities.
While digital technologies promise empowerment and inclusion, they also introduce new risks—especially for those at the intersection of gender and disability. Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) is abuse carried out through digital tools, disproportionately affecting women and girls with disabilities due to reliance on assistive tech, socioeconomic barriers, and caregiver or peer control. While risks include harassment, surveillance, and limited access to safe devices, digital spaces can also empower through advocacy, self-expression, and economic opportunities.
What does it really take to make healthcare equitable for marginalized communities? For millions living with disabilities, racialized demographics and women, accessing healthcare can feel more like an obstacle rather than something helpful. It’s neither built for them nor with them in mind. Despite good intentions, many services remain inaccessible, unresponsive, and disconnected from the realities of the people they serve. We often talk about health in terms of medicine and policy. However, seldom do we explore structural bias, digital exclusion, and lack of community participation.
Welcome to Disability Dialogues, a podcast about co-creating inclusive healthcare and wellbeing with communities brought to you by the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Health Equity and Community Wellbeing at Toronto Metropolitan University.
This special release explores the complexities and emotional terrain of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) through a personal and reflective lens, inviting listeners to consider what it means to navigate life, loss, and autonomy within academic and institutional spaces.
Content note: This episode contains discussions of suicide and medical assistance in dying (MAiD) for
mental illness.
Stay tuned for our summer podcast series, where we’ll continue to unpack timely and important topics impacting the health and wellbeing of our communities.
