Grant: Planning Grants - PA: First Nations, Inuit or Métis Planning Activities

Indigenous populations around the world struggle with considerable health inequities compared to their non-Indigenous counterparts. The Indigenous Peoples of Canada - First Nation, Inuit, and Métis - are recognized in the Constitution Act of Canada 1982, Section 35. The purpose of the proposed meeting is to discuss a research project investigating Competencies for Indigenous Public Health, Evaluation and Research (CIPHER). The project team believes Indigenous health inequities in Canada and abroad can be reduced by designing and implementing core competencies in public health that directly address the health needs of Indigenous communities. Public health competencies represent a set of skills, knowledge and attitudes necessary for providing effective health services. Competencies also inform education, training, research and governance. Due to the unique historic circumstances of Indigenous communities, caused by colonization, racism, and poverty, it is necessary for competencies to be developed for Indigenous public health. CIPHER is an emerging collaboration of scholars from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and the U.S., committed to pursuing the creation of Indigenous public health competencies. The proposed workshop will gather Canadian stakeholders from the academic, practitioner and community levels, who will participate in developing the CIPHER project and benefit from the implementation of Indigenous public health competencies. The workshop is expected to produce a detailed research agenda, a funding proposal for the CIPHER project, plans to write a policy paper and preliminary descriptions of Indigenous public health competencies. The workshop is an essential step towards implementing effective Indigenous public health competencies, which aim to improve research and evaluation methods, inform public health training and practice and enlighten health services delivery, leading to better overall health among Aboriginal populations in Canada.