Grant: Project Grant

Inuit, Métis and First Nations ("Indigenous") populations have the highest rates of health burdens in relation to the general populations living in Canada. For example, for First Nations compared to the general population, cancer incidence is rising more rapidly and survival is poorer for several cancer types. These and other health burdens are the direct result of Canadian government policies that have undermined opportunities for Indigenous populations to address community-level needs and improve outcomes as stated in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada call to action #18. We are members of an Indigenous and non-Indigenous team of researchers ("the team"), many of whom have been involved in the development of a training resource, called "Indigenous Community Research Partnerships" (the "training resource"). The training resource is a program for researchers and researchers-in-training who are not experienced with Indigenous community research partnerships. The training resource was developed to provide guidance on how to conduct research that reflects, advances, and meets expectations for ethical, collaborative, and culturally supportive engagement with Indigenous individuals and communities. We propose to evaluate the use of the training resource and have designed our project to meet Indigenous community priorities and needs across five partner sites and to utilize local Indigenous knowledge through a community-centred approach to develop and conduct evaluation of the training resource. In the process we will use a research approach that starts with Indigenous knowledge to design, conduct and assess the evaluation of a training resource for researchers who will work with Indigenous people.