Grant: Healthy and Productive Work - Partnership Grants

Building on a 2016 SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (FILE #890-2016-3038) in primary partnership w/ Northern Health (NH) and the First Nations Health Authority (FNHA), the broadest goal of this 2018-2023 Partnership Grant is: to improve health sector employment environments, and the delivery of healthcare services, in Northern BC (and beyond) by researching, implementing, and evidencing "culturally agile" healthcare services especially by using community-informed decolonizing critical humanities and social science methods and methodologies. Culturally agile healthcare services in BC would: 1) support (especially Indigenous) people from northern and rural places to join and stay in healthcare employment professions and 2) ensure the healthcare system is safer for all Indigenous peoples, including employees. This goal was honed over 17 months in consultation w/ 20+ community organizations across Northern BC and in close partnership w/ NH and FNHA.Delivery of healthcare services in BC is uniquely complex: in 2005, BC First Nations (FN), the Province of BC, and the Government of Canada signed a Transformative Change Accord, agreeing to work together to "...restore, revitalize and strengthen [the health of] First Nations and their communities and families [and] to eliminate the gap in standards of living w/ other British Columbians...". This resulted, in part, in the FNHA, the first province-wide health authority of its kind in Canada. In 2013, the FNHA assumed programs, services, and responsibilities formerly handled by Health Canada's First Nations Inuit Health Branch -- Pacific Region: the FNHA's vision is to transform the health and well-being of BC's First Nations and Aboriginal people by dramatically changing healthcare for the better. The FNHA works closely w/ other Health Authorities, including NH, which, w/ over 35% of the FN population in BC, serves the highest proportion of FN people in BC. With more than 8000 employees, NH is one of the largest employers in northern BC.Indigenous people live w/ multiple health barriers, including chronic illnesses and poor mental health, w/ Indigenous women facing increased barriers. Fostering Indigenous participation in the healthcare labour force, especially as it is demonstrated to increase the health of ALL Indigenous peoples in a service delivery area, is an urgent and dynamically emerging concern. Conversations between NH and Aboriginal Health Improvement Committees (AHICs -- who are tasked w/ collaboratively addressing local challenges that manifest first at a systems level based on relationships w/ communities) established a critical need to address issues such a racism and cultural safety within NH. These conversations established needs for new tools and interventions, which are 'beyond tables and numbers' and instead'speak to the heart' and 'incorporate Indigenous ways of knowing and being'. Our Partnership Grant (PG) will extend established partnerships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary stakeholders across Northern BC. We align specifically w/ SSHRC's 'future challenge area' in addressing how experiences and aspirations of Indigenous Peoples are essential in building a successful shared future healthcare workforce in Northern BC. Our team (representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous stakeholders, social and medical/health scientists, along w/ humanities scholars and health employers) will work together in developing new ways of educating and strengthening a culturally safe & agile northern healthcare workforce for tomorrow by focusing on ways decolonizing community-informed social sciences and humanities approaches to knowledge production and dissemination might be mobilized to inform or develop healthcare delivery.