Grant: Team Grant: CCNA Phase III: Internation. Australia-Canada Indigenous Health Res.

Indigenous peoples are experiencing disproportionate rates of dementia due to ongoing colonization, yet culturally safe health communication to improve the dementia assessment process for Indigenous peoples remains under-resourced. Therefore, our proposed research aims to address this gap by co-designing culturally-centred resources to strengthen health communication for Indigenous people in Canada and Australia along the dementia assessment journey, specifically for risk reduction and cognitive assessment. Our research uses an Indigenous adaptation of participatory action research while ensuring Indigenous Ways of Knowing, Being, and Doing are woven throughout. Furthermore, our research will be informed by an ecological systems theory, providing a holistic lens for considering interconnectivity and relational interactions. First, we will collaboratively identify and map health communication pathway strengths and resource needs to inform community resource priorities for dementia risk reduction and cognitive assessment. This will be completed using yarning (Australia) and talking (Canada) circles with Elders and community members. Simultaneously, an international scoping review will be completed to determine what is available in the published and grey literature. In the second phase of the work yarning and talking circles will again be completed to co-design, develop, and translate community-prioritized, culturally-centered resources to strengthen health communication pathways for dementia risk reduction and cognitive assessment. The involvement of co-researchers and a participatory approach embeds integrated knowledge translation in the methodological approach. Moreover, this work and the ethical, strengths-based, and Indigenous-centered approach that adheres to ethical principles is highly applicable to other contexts and other underrepresented groups in dementia care settings by providing a process to undertake this developmental work.