Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

The integration of healthcare and social services is a strategy utilized in health policy to tackle health inequalities among vulnerable groups, often focusing in part on social determinants of health (SDOH). This is an approach taken to address Indigenous health within Ontario and British Columbia; however little is known about client and service provider experiences of integrated healthcare offered through Indigenous health policies. Within Ontario, the Aboriginal Healing and Wellness Strategy (AHWS) is an Indigenous health policy aimed at addressing health inequalities. Established through the AHWS, community-based Aboriginal Health Access Centres (AHACs) provide integrated mainstream health services and traditional Indigenous services to Indigenous communities. The author's previous research looked at the ways in which service providers within this setting conceptualized and addressed the health needs of their clients. Findings from this community-engaged study demonstrate that service providers effectively utilize the SDOH to understand the causes of health inequalities but are limited in their ability to address those that occur at a structural level. Through a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, the proposed project will gather client and service provider understandings and experiences of integrated healthcare in First Nations community settings in British Columbia under the B.C. Tripartite Framework Agreement on First Nation Health Governance. This presentation brings together the findings from previous research on Indigenous health inequalities and SDOH, and considers the opportunity for the proposed research to understand the experiences and community impacts of policies and services that integrate Western and Indigenous approaches to health and wellness in communities.