Grant: Operating Grant: Pathways IRT - Component 1 - Tuberculosis

Herein, we, (the Tuberculosis Program Evaluation and Research Unit ([TB PE & RU: http://tbper.ualberta.ca/)] in the Department of Medicine at the University of Alberta, along with colleagues from Saskatchewan Health, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Toronto in Ontario ([see applicant table]) provide a proposal for funding to the "Pathways to Health Equity for Aboriginal Peoples" competition in the first component, under the tuberculosis (TB) pillar. The goals described in this proposal relate to the development of a team and an intervention aimed at correcting the marginalization of Indigenous peoples with respect to TB programming and, further, to reduce the incidence of TB in their communities. This proposal describes the development of a team with four interconnected communities in a high-incidence region to 1) make relevant to Indigenous Peoples the Tuberculosis Patients' Charter of Rights, 2) create a regional coalition that would advocate for local priorities and the removal of barriers to health equity associated with TB transmission, infection and disease to the proposed team of stakeholders and upstream to the Partners for Engagement and Knowledge Exchange (PEKEs); and 3) document the development of a regional, non-jurisdictional framework for population health interventions using an implementation science approach. The communities would participate as a region rather than a patchwork of jurisdictions and exclusive ¬TB programming efforts that have heretofore operated exclusively. Following the team development stage and in the second component, each community will implement a local level intervention. As such, the regional framework is a program-level intervention, within which community level priorities can be advanced.