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

CAREX Canada is a national project estimating the number of Canadians exposed to substances associated with cancer in workplace or community environments, which can help scientists, policy makers, and experts in cancer prevention to identify priorities and target communities or workplaces for further research or interventions. CAREX has developed tools and training to increase understanding of potential exposures to known and suspected carcinogens in community environments. An important user of these tools is First Nations (FN) organizations and communities, as environmental quality is central to cultural practices and the sustainability of communities with local resources. Pilot training, undertaken in collaboration with representatives of FN communities in partnership with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and the First Nations Environmental Health Innovation Network (FNEHIN), indicates the usefulness of CAREX tools for environment and health research. We are moving into a targeted knowledge dissemination phase with objectives to build capacity for understanding local environmental quality, and to enable users to prioritize environmental health issues, identify important data gaps and research questions, and develop skills to create and visualize local confidential data. Using CAREX tools in conjunction with local knowledge, users will be able to develop health and resource development policies that reduce or eliminate exposures to harmful contaminants, thereby improving community health in both the short and long term. Meetings between specialists in Environmental Health and Knowledge Translation (KT) from both academic and FN organizations will be instrumental in developing knowledge dissemination and community recruitment plans to actively deliver training on CAREX tools to FN communities in a culturally appropriate and effective manner, and may also aid in identifying research opportunities related to evaluating KT in FN communities.