Grant: Fellowship: POR Awards - Trans. to Leadership - P1 - Indigenous Peoples' Health

Tuberculosis (TB) is a public health crisis among Inuit in Canada. The Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) and the Canadian government are committed to eliminating TB by 2030 and have laid out Inuit-specific priority actions, one of which is to strengthen TB care and prevention capacity. This proposed research, which is co-led by the Nunavik Regional Board of Health & Social Services (NRBHSS), contributes to that priority action. The overarching goal is to develop, implement and evaluate an Inuit-specific community health worker pilot program in TB, and a video-based training programme on cultural safety for all health care workers in TB prevention and care, in the communities of Salluit and Kangiqsualujjuaq, Nunavik. The specific research objectives are to: 1) Understand patient, community, and health care provider perspectives on TB and TB-related care needs and priorities, including on issues of cultural competency and cultural safety; 2) Produce and evaluate a video-based training module on cultural safety for TB health care providers; and 3) Identify and evaluate community and patient-oriented outcomes for a pilot local CHW training program. This research is a collaborative effort between non-Inuit and Inuit researchers and community leaders, and follows a Two-eyed Seeing approach, which can be understood as the synthesis of Indigenous ways of knowing with non-Indigenous methodologies and participatory action research. The output of this research includes Inuit-specific training programs for CHW and health care workers in TB in Nunavik, and local research and health capacity development.