This website stores cookies on your computer. These cookies are used to collect information about how you interact with our website and allow us to remember your browser. We use this information to improve and customize your browsing experience, for analytics and metrics about our visitors both on this website and other media, and for marketing purposes. By using this website, you accept and agree to be bound by UVic’s Terms of Use for web and social media privacy.  If you do not agree to the above, you can configure your browser’s setting to “do not track.”

Skip to main content
People Departments Maps Buildings Rooms A-Z
University
of Victoria
Apply Library
Sign in Online tools Sign out
Faculty of Graduate Studies

Marcela Zamudio

  • B.A. (University of Sao Paulo, 2022)
Notice of the Final Oral Examination for the Degree of Master of Arts

Topic

Health Inequities Among 2SLGBTQI+ During COVID-19 in Canada: Examining the Role of Socioeconomic Factors

Social Dimensions of Health

Date & location

  • Thursday, August 20, 2026
  • 9:00 A.M.
  • Virtual Defence

Examining Committee

Supervisory Committee

  • Dr. Robert Beringer, School of Public Health and Social Policy, University of Victoria (Supervisor)

  • Dr. Nathan Lachowsky, School of Public Health and Social Policy, UVic (Co-Supervisor)

  • Dr. Simon Carroll, School of Public Health and Social Policy, UVic (Member)

External Examiner

  • Dr. Kiffer Card, School of Public Health and Social Policy, UVic

Chair of Oral Examination

  •  Dr. Julie Williams, School of Public Administration, UVic

Abstract

The aim of the present thesis was to examine how socioeconomic factors shaped health among 2SLGBTQI+ people in Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, I sought to identify which socioeconomic indicators were most consistently linked to pandemic-era health outcomes in this population and to assess how those circumstances related to COVID-19 infection when age, gender identity, and economic position were taken into account together.

Drawing on the Our Health 2022 survey—a community-based study of 2SLGBTQI+ people aged 15 and older in Canada—I addressed these aims in two empirical studies. In the first, I used random forest variable importance to screen correlates of twelve pandemic-era outcomes: self-rated change in overall and mental health, six domain-specific concerns, and four testing and infection measures. Across roughly 1,743 to 1,766 complete cases, economic and pandemic-specific material strain dominated the rankings. Inability to pay debt and food insecurity entered the top 15 for eleven of the twelve outcomes; financial strain entered ten. Age was the only non-economic variable to appear in every hierarchy. Variables related to sexual orientation and gender identity mattered in a more selective way.

In the second study, I used MAIHDA to examine how age, gender identity, and economic position jointly patterned COVID-19 infection history. When economic position was measured as income (48 strata; N = 2,927), the additive main effects accounted for essentially all between-stratum variation. When it was measured as pandemic-related debt burden (36 strata; N = 2,864), residual variation remained that the separate effects of each axis could not fully explain. Younger adults carried the highest burden in both specifications; older trans participants carried the lowest.

Taken together, the findings suggest that material shock—more than income alone—was the more consistent economic signal in this sample and that the choice of socioeconomic measure changes what a multi-axis analysis is able to show. Future pandemic preparedness for 2SLGBTQI+ communities needs to treat economic shock and identity-affirming support as connected priorities, rather than as separate ones.

Back to oral exams