Grant: Operating Grant - PA: First Nations, Inuit and Metis Health

This project undertakes research that identifies both barriers to, and opportunities for, developing systems for the provision of culturally safe and accessible healthcare for the Urban Aboriginal population of the Central Okanagan valley. By cultural safety, we mean being culturally sensitive, having awareness of your own cultural realities and attitudes, being open minded, having flexible attitutdes toward people from other cultures, and, having an ability to locate health problems within the context of social and historical processes of racism and colonialism. Cultural safety involves reorienting the training of health professionals, incorporating ethnic sensitivity, and actively seeking critical understanding of colonial structures and their impact on contemporary Indigenous populations. Utilizing participatory action research methods and informed by indigenous methodologies and white studies, the objectives of this project are: 1) to work with local Aboriginal groups and Interior Health to assess current practices for cultural safety, both generally on a system-wide basis and in two specific sites managed by Interior Health; 2) to work with local Aboriginal groups and Interior Health to develop and pilot test a cultural safety audit tool to guide quality improvement to support the provision of culturally safe healthcare for Aboriginal people; 3) to design and test strategies informed by assessments of cultural safety to foster and strengthen healthcare practices; and, 4) to develop a guide for better practices for the provision of culturally safe care for urban Aboriginal people in healthcare settings in BC, and Canada.