2021 On-Marg Index and onmaRg Updates Now Available

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On-Marg Index Update

On July 14th, Public Health Ontario posted an update to the Ontario Marginalization Index with the 2021 dataset. This update included a change to the names of the dimensions:

  • The “Residential Instability” dimension is now “Households and Dwellings”
  • The “Material Deprivation” dimension is now “Material Resources”
  • The “Dependency” dimension is now “Age and Labour Force”
  • The “Ethnic Concentration” dimension is now “Racialized and Newcomer Populations”

These new titles were developed through community consultations across Ontario, and is a move away from deficit-based language. https://www.publichealthontario.ca/en/Data-and-Analysis/Health-Equity/Ontario-Marginalization-Index.

Stats Canada Update

The 2021 administration of the national census included updates to the census geography shapefiles. These changes include:

  • Renaming column names to include both English and French acronyms.
  • Removal of other geographic labels and creation of a new resource that contains the naming conventions for each level of geography.

onmaRg Package Update

To support the easier access and use of these datasets, the onmaRg package has been updated on CRAN to include both of these datasets, and continues to support the datasets from previous years: https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/onmaRg/index.html.

These changes include:

  • An update to the om_data() function to accept 2021 as a valid year.
  • An update to the om_geo() function to accept 2021 as a valid year.
  • An update to the 2016 parameter to access the new location of the 2016 On-Marg Index.

Many thanks to those that are including the onmaRg package as part of their workflow. As of this morning, the onmaRg package has been downloaded 2409 times: https://hadley.shinyapps.io/cran-downloads/.

If you are interested in getting started with the onmaRg package, a walk-through video is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjxrS1Wo4vc.

Also, if you are including onmaRg in your workflow and have a request or suggestion for a feature or function, please feel free to reach out.

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