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A Capacity-Based Framework for Strengthening Primary Care Access in British Columbia

At the Vancouver Youth Mathematical Modeling Association (VYMMA), our healthcare capacity project focuses on one of the most urgent public-policy challenges facing British Columbia and Canada today: how to transform healthcare funding, workforce planning, and system reforms into measurable improvements in patient access. While healthcare is often discussed through broad concerns such as doctor shortages, long wait times, emergency-room overcrowding, and lack of family-doctor attachment, our project aims to study these problems through a structured, data-informed, and mathematically grounded approach.

This project investigates the capacity gap within British Columbia’s primary-care system, especially the difficulty many residents face in finding a family doctor or consistent primary-care provider. Instead of only asking how much money is invested or how many healthcare workers are hired, our report asks a deeper question: how effectively are public resources converted into real patient-facing capacity? Through mathematical modeling, policy analysis, and scenario-based evaluation, we examine how workforce supply, administrative burden, registry waitlists, clinic efficiency, patient attachment, and emergency-department diversion interact within the broader healthcare system.

Our research emphasizes the idea of measurable capacity conversion. In other words, we study whether healthcare investments actually lead to more usable appointment slots, more attached patients, shorter wait times, improved access to primary care, and reduced pressure on hospitals. By building simplified but checkable models, we aim to make complex healthcare problems easier to understand for students, policymakers, community organizations, and the general public.

The project also reflects VYMMA’s broader mission: to connect theoretical mathematical learning with real-world civic challenges. Healthcare policy is not only a medical issue; it is also a problem of resource allocation, system design, data interpretation, and long-term planning. Through this project, our team applies mathematical modeling to public policy in order to better understand where bottlenecks occur, what reforms may be most effective, and how governments can evaluate outcomes more transparently.

Our healthcare report is designed for public discussion and government review. It is intended to support elected officials, health authorities, policy staff, medical professionals, community organizations, and youth civic partners in understanding the structural challenges behind healthcare access. We hope that by translating public data into clear models and practical recommendations, this project can contribute to more evidence-based discussions about healthcare reform in British Columbia.

Ultimately, our healthcare capacity project is not simply a research exercise. It is a youth-led effort to show that students can engage seriously with complex public issues, analyze them with quantitative tools, and propose constructive solutions. Through this work, VYMMA hopes to encourage more young people to participate in policy research, civic dialogue, and data-driven problem solving, while contributing meaningful ideas to one of Canada’s most important social systems.