Grant: Meetings, Planning and Dissemination Grant: Aboriginal Peoples' Health

We propose to hold 3 face-to-face meetings in Toronto with Canadian collaborators, one of which will also include international collaborators, monthly teleconferences, and email correspondence to develop a research project to be submitted for the winter 2010 CIHR operating grant competition. The overall objective of the research project is to develop new knowledge and capacity to address mental health and substance use problems in Indigenous youth, focusing on stigma and discrimination, education, cultural competency and youth empowerment. The two components of the project to be developed are to 1) build upon the work of the national solvent abuse program among Aboriginal youth in Canada; and 2) expand this work into an international project for Canada, New Zealand and Australia that builds on a current initiative to develop a research program on treatment of solvent abuse among Indigenous youth in Canada, United States, Mexico and Australia. Through the National Youth Solvent Abuse Program for Aboriginal youth, we will 1) examine the scope and impact of stigma and discrimination on Aboriginal youth with substance use and mental health problems; 2) evaluate and expand on current services to scale up anti-stigma/discrimination initiatives for addictions and mental health in Aboriginal youth in Canada; and 3) build new initiatives such as web-based prevention and early intervention programs, youth empowerment, and support young service users participation in developing and implementing interventions in the centres and communities. We will then integrate the national component into a comprehensive international initiative to compare the experience of stigma and discrimination in Canada, New Zealand and Australia, evaluate existing anti-stigma/discrimination programs, and identify effective treatment and anti-stigma/discrimination strategies for Indigenous youth that can be implemented at individual, community, systems and policy levels in the 3 countries.