Grant: Catalyst Grant: Moving Upstream - Structural Racism and Health Inequities

Canada was founded on enslavement and land dispossession-the major mechanisms of settler colonialism. For both Indigenous (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit), and Black populations in Canada, settler colonialism has both a historical and ongoing imprint on their lives, life experiences, and health. Settler-colonial systems facilitate structurally racist health policies and practices, contributing to disparate health outcomes. Despite the conceptual and theoretical understanding of the relationship between settler colonization and Indigenous and Black economic, justice, and health outcomes, there is a notable lack of standardized scales and measures that accurately capture the multifaceted lived experiences of settler colonialism. This Catalyst project will use a collaborative, community-engaged approach with Black and Indigenous communities to develop novel survey instruments to measure the experience of settler colonialism, allowing for the co-construction of health equity agendas and to develop community-based policies and interventions. Using the Delphi method, the Catalyst project will establish a panel of academics and community health leaders from Black and Indigenous communities to develop a survey conceptual model of settler colonialism and structural racism in contemporary lived experiences. The survey instrument will be launched in Black and Indigenous communities. The findings on survey instrument performance will be disseminated to the panel of academics and community health leaders in Black and Indigenous communities in Canada. The proposed Catalyst project will bridge the gap between broad macro-level concepts and nuanced lived experiences.