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When people leave a correctional facility, they often re-enter the community with complex health needs and limited support. Yet little is known about what happens to their health care while in contact with these facilities and once they are released. 

Kat Dolguikh, MSc鈥�26, is working to better understand that transition through her research examining health care access and continuity of care for Albertans after leaving the provincial correctional system. 

Through funding from the O鈥橞rien Institute for Public Health鈥檚 , Dolguikh worked with community partners who regularly support individuals with correctional system contact and those navigating reintegration after incarceration.

Dolguikh, a former master鈥檚 student in the Department of Community Health Sciences at the Cumming School of Medicine, uses a novel approach that incorporates community knowledge into the interpretation of quantitative results to reduce potential bias and strengthen research relevance.

Understanding care after incarceration

鈥淩esearch in correctional health is growing, but we don鈥檛 know much about what that looks like in Alberta,鈥� says Dolguikh. 鈥淭hat gap is concerning, especially because people who have been incarcerated often experience other social and structural barriers that affect their health. Including this population in public health research is important for achieving health equity.鈥�

Using administrative health data, Dolguikh鈥檚 study explored patterns of primary care access for people while incarcerated and following their release. She found that individuals who were already connected to primary care, particularly those with a regular family physician, were more likely to experience stronger continuity of care after returning to the community. In a province where access to family physicians is already strained, this finding highlights the additional barriers faced by people transitioning out of custody.

Her research also found that substance use and a history of homelessness were associated with poorer continuity of care. These overlapping challenges point to the broader social context shaping health outcomes after release.

Adding community context

While the project is largely quantitative, a defining feature of Dolguikh鈥檚 work was the integration of community engagement. 

鈥淭hese conversations provided essential contextual expertise, allowing Kat to bridge the gap between raw data and the lived realities of the population,鈥� says Dr. Reed Beall, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Community Health Sciences and member of the O鈥橞rien Institute, who co-supervised Dolguikh.

These perspectives helped contextualize the data and identify nuances that administrative records alone could not capture. These meetings also provided more information on administrative data that could inform more accurate interpretation for other relevant research.

鈥淭here isn鈥檛 a lot of data on how health care works in correctional systems,鈥� Dolguikh says. 鈥淲orking with community partners helped me think more critically about what the numbers were actually reflecting and who might not be captured in the data.鈥�

Through conversations with the diverse group of frontline service providers, researchers, and community advocates, Dolguikh was encouraged to consider structural barriers that extend beyond clinical access, such as housing instability, stigma, and rural residence. 

This process pushed Dolguikh to think more carefully about how her own perspective might shape the research and how the findings are interpreted, helping ensure the results reflected real-world experiences.

What this means for health equity

This work also advances health equity by ensuring quantitative data is not interpreted in a vacuum, according to Beall. 鈥淏y seeking contextual validation from professionals who work daily with people experiencing marginalization, Kat ensured our findings were respectful, accurate, and clinically relevant rather than unintentionally perpetuating stereotypes.鈥�

鈥淐ollaborating with community partners through the support of the Health Equity HUB made my project stronger and more meaningful. It reminded me that behind every data point is a person navigating complex systems,鈥� Dolguikh says. 鈥淚 have also learnt that including community engagement in quantitative research projects is possible 鈥� it鈥檚 not difficult and it makes your work more valuable.鈥�

Dolguikh hopes her research will contribute to a growing body of work focused on correctional health in Alberta and underscore the importance of health care access and continuity of care during critical transition periods. 

By combining quantitative data with community-informed interpretation, her work highlights both the measurable gaps in care and the lived realities behind them, reinforcing the need for health systems that are more accessible and responsive to people leaving correctional facilities.