Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Despite the youngness of the Aboriginal population in Canada, the population of older Aboriginal adults is increasing. Research has demonstrated that Aboriginal older adults suffer from much poorer health in comparison to non-Aboriginal older adults, with older Aboriginal adults suffering from chronic conditions at much higher rates than non-Aboriginal older adults. Physical activity (PA) is an important way to improve health, maintain independence, and help older adults remain in their homes; however, colonization has influenced the PA of older Aboriginal adults by discouraging their participation in traditional and cultural physical practices. Limited research has been conducted to understand what PA means for Aboriginal older adults, especially culturally safe PA. Despite the promise of culturally safe approaches to PA, there has been limited research conducted to understand how cultural safety can be measured, if at all. During this research project, I will explore how to measure cultural safety and examine how older Aboriginal adults and program leaders in one urban community and one rural/remote community experience cultural safety and measure the success of a PA program. Using these results, I will co-develop and implement culturally safe PA programs in both communities and will use the cultural safety measurements to conduct a participatory evaluation of the program to determine its impact. The contributions of this research include demonstrating how PA programs can be adapted to be culturally safe for older Aboriginal adults, including late-life adults, which would contribute to improving the health of this population and would help guide future PA program development in communities and residences for older adults. Additionally, I will contribute to understandings of what older Aboriginal adults identify as success indicators in a PA program in comparison to contemporary biomedical perspectives and to developing a method to measure cultural safety.