RE-AIM member, Kennes Lin and Dr. Ted Lo published an article on Healthy Debate, titled “Using ‘Integration’ to Silence Culturally Specific Care” (October 20, 2025). The article asserted that Toronto Western Hospital, long linked to Chinatown, dismantled AIM under the banner of “integration,” erasing one of the few hospital based programs designed to meet Asian communities’ linguistic, cultural, and psychosocial needs; critics note patients were not informed, requests for translated notices were ignored, clinicians were laid off, and public messaging obscured the change until press coverage, raising the broader concern that hospitals, as stewards of the public good, undermine equity when culturally specific care is folded into generic services without safeguards, transparency, or community recognition. The piece argues that true equity requires culturally responsive care, warns that “integration” can become a euphemism for erasure that damages trust across racialized communities, and calls for institutional humility and proof that any integration will preserve, not dilute, culturally grounded care, because when such programs vanish, the shared commons we all rely on is weakened.

[Read the full article here]
https://healthydebate.ca/2025/10/topic/using-integration-silence-culturally-specific-care/