This report was published by The Wellesley Institue

HERE’S HOW THE AUTHORS DESCRIBE THIS REPORT:

Youth of today are the leaders of tomorrow. Their healthy growth and development is a collective interest of our society. One third of the 242,000 newcomers coming each year to Canada are youth. As of 2006, 9 percent of Canadian youth under 25 were immigrants, and this number is expected to increase dramatically within the next decade as more immigrants arrive in Canada. Young immigrants face very different challenges from those faced by their parents and by other Canadian youth.

Their challenges are related to adapting to a new country with an entirely different culture, often with the added weight of poverty. Most research on youth health to date has focused on biomedical and individual behavioural factors. However, these studies lack deeper understanding of how youth’s life situations facilitate or act as barriers to practice behaviours directed towards healthy lifestyles. This study is based on the social determinants of health approach which recognizes that both individual and structural factors affect individual health and well-being.