Grant: Planning Grants - Priority Announcement: Improve Health and Health Equity

This workshop will unite academic health scientists and First Nations health leaders in Northern Ontario and Northern BC to form a larger community-university collaboration. Together, this group will initiate research to develop a measure of health and well-being for First Nations children. There are tremendous opportunities to change Aboriginal children's health by studying the positive end of the spectrum (health and well-being) and implementing targeted health promotion strategies. However, the mechanism to identify local needs and match them to relevant health promotion and prevention programs is missing. Our ultimate goal is to address this gap. Laurentian University (LU) and the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) have proven track-records of successful research collaboration with First Nations communities. The partner First Nations reserve communities are: Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve in Northern Ontario and a First Nations community in Northern BC. Collectively, this group has the capacity to conduct research that reaches beyond local and regional issues and will ensure the resulting research has relevance nationally. The nature of community-university collaboration requires face-to-face meetings to promote the development of strong cohesive relationships. The funds requested will enable 4 days of intensive dialogue and planning on how to best measure the health and well-being of First Nations children in Canada. The meeting will be held at the UNBC Lhuhuhwhezdel (Gathering Place), in Prince George BC, from May 12-15th 2011. Together, we will write an operating grant to create a measure of child well-being, using use cutting-edge cross-cultural translation and scale development methods, relevant to a variety of First Nations communities. This workshop will serve as the foundation to a novel evidence-based Aboriginal child health promotion research program.