Grant: Meetings, Planning and Dissemination Grant: Aboriginal Peoples' Health

The goal of this grant is to hold three consultations between health researchers, health care providers, artists/writers, and Aboriginal peoples in northern B.C and the territories of the Carrier Sekani Peoples. The consultations build upon on emerging research that suggest the creative arts facilitate increased trust in patients toward their care-provides and assist in sensitized cross-cultural communications between physicians and patients. The purpose of the consultations is to identify, consider, and document how practices like story-telling or making visual arts assist Aboriginal peoples in accessing and attainting healthcare services more attuned to specific sociocultural and geographic needs. In efforts to submit a CIHR Operating Grant (2011/12), the meetings and consultations will expand and enhance new linkages between Carrier Sekani Family Services, The Northern Medical Program at UNBC (The Faculty of Medicine at UBC), The Northern Health Authority, The National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health, and Two Rivers Art Gallery of Prince George. Most broadly the objectives of these meetings are to 1) catalyze research about 'creatively' providing health care to Aboriginal people in remote and under serviced areas, 2) galvanize a community-university-government partnership, 3) produce a competitive CIHR proposal aimed at improving health of Aboriginal peoples in northern B.C. and beyond. The project will unfold through the following steps: 1) Identification of key stakeholders involved in healthcare provision and Aboriginal peoples in rural, remote, or northern geographies, 2) Production of a literature review and environmental scan concerning Aboriginal health, health care provision and the fine arts, and culturally appropriate means of bettering health statuses of Indigenous peoples, 3) Convening of three meetings, involving previously identified stakeholders and at least one graduate student, to strategize and develop further research proposals.