Grant: Team Grant : Environments and Health - LOI - IWK/TEK/TES

Our programmatic goal is to examine how Indigenous wellness, strength, and resilience - under the broad umbrella of upstream health prevention strategies (i.e. addressing distal determinants of health) - can be operationalized in ethical, equitable, and effective ways through intersectoral partnerships in a broad array of resource development sectors in Indigenous territories. Six objectives will meet this research program's goal: 1. Build on existing partnerships and develop new relationships with communities, governments, organizations, and industries to explore the upstream prevention programs, policies, strategies, and regulations being used to reduce the cumulative health impacts of resource development on Indigenous peoples; 2. In collaboration with Indigenous Knowledge-Holders, their intersectoral partners, and other knowledge users, generate a framework for identifying, documenting, and understanding what 'successful' partnerships for ethical and equitable resource development look like through a preventive health lens; 3. Through specific case studies, assess existing attempts to integrate Indigenous and Western ontologies, epistemologies, and methodologies into prevention strategies seeking to operationalize ethical, equitable, and effective intersectoral partnerships involving resource development; 4. Conduct a high-level meta-analysis across all cases to provide strong policy, strategy, and system recommendations for achieving wellness, strength, and resilience for all Canadians in the context of resource development; 5. Provide training opportunities in intersectoral health prevention research for trainees, knowledge users, and partners through National Gatherings and Field Schools; and 6. Advance new knowledge and share insights generated through this program with communities, industry, and government knowledge users through traditional and innovative channels using an equity-focused approach to do so.