Essai de typologie des centres de santé et de services sociaux au Québec

Given the importance of contextual factors—physical, social and institutional environments—for understanding health landscapes, this article examines the situation in the province of Québec and suggests a spatial typology at the scale of the health and social services centres (CSSS). These CSSS provide services for 95 areas which are the finest territorial delineation in terms of health policies since a reform instituted in 2003. While delivery of primary health and social services is defined at this local scale, overall health policy is decided at the provincial scale. The challenge for stakeholders is to supplement their local knowledge with that of the broader context. In this article, we use principal components analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis to identify eight profiles of CSSS. The final results of the cluster analysis demonstrate that two‐thirds of the health and social services centres correspond with two marginally differentiated profiles and the remaining third shows specificities that are highly spatially anchored.