"Because you love us as much as we love you": The role of community relationships in facilitating Indigenous engagement in healthcare.

Grounded in relational worldviews and ways of being, Indigenous health on Turtle Island once thrived. However, colonization disrupted and sought to delegitimize Indigenous relationships, having devastating impacts on Indigenous health and contributing to persistent Indigenous health disparities. Making matters worse, Indigenous Peoples face barriers to engagement in mainstream Canadian healthcare, including racism and the marginalization of Indigenous relational conceptions of health and ways of caring.

Bonding social capital and health within four First Nations communities in Canada: A cross-sectional study.

To date, research on social capital in Indigenous contexts has been scarce. In this quantitative study, our objectives were to (1): Describe bonding social capital within four distinct First Nations communities in Canada, and (2) Explore the associations between bonding social capital and self-rated health in these communities. With community permission, cross-sectional data were drawn from the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds study.

Public health moves to innocence and evasion? Graduate training programs' engagement in truth and reconciliation for Indigenous health.

Objectives: Indigenous peoples are the first peoples of what is now called Canada. Canadians have benefitted from their largesse and contributions in a myriad of ways that remain unacknowledged. Indeed, ongoing colonization and systemic anti-Indigenous racism in all quarters of our society have had heinous impacts on their health and well-being.

Implementing Indigenous Gender-Based Analysis in Research: Principles, Practices and Lessons Learned.

Numerous tools for addressing gender inequality in governmental policies, programs, and research have emerged across the globe. Unfortunately, such tools have largely failed to account for the impacts of colonialism on Indigenous Peoples' lives and lands. In Canada, Indigenous organizations have advanced gender-based analysis frameworks that are culturally-grounded and situate the understanding of gender identities, roles, and responsibilities within and across diverse Indigenous contexts.

Toward intersectional and culturally relevant sex and gender analysis in health research.

Current institutional frameworks in sex- and gender-based analysis (SGBA) are promising, but significant gaps remain in their relation to recent developments in research praxis. In this paper we draw from our own experiences with a national health research funding agency, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), to critically examine the uptake and implementation of its current frameworks and practices of sex and gender analysis in health research. We conducted semi-structured interviews with a cohort of 18 health researchers alongside an institutional policy analysis to show how sex and gender have been understood, integrated, and addressed within the agency and initiative.

If only they had accessed the data: Governmental failure to monitor pulp mill impacts on human health in Pictou Landing First Nation.

For over fifty years, Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN), a small Mi'kmaw community on the northern shore of mainland Nova Scotia, Canada, has been told by a Joint Environmental Health Monitoring Committee (JEHMC) mandated to oversee the health of the community that their health has not been impacted by exposure to 85 million litres of pulp mill effluent dumped every day into what was once a culturally significant body of water bordering their community. Yet, based on lived experience, the community knows otherwise, and despite countless dollars spent on government and industry-sponsored research, their concerns have not gone away. Using biopolitical theory, we explore why JEHMC never fully implemented its mandate.

Are the natural sciences ready for truth, healing, and reconciliation with Indigenous peoples in Canada? Exploring 'settler readiness' at a world-class freshwater research station.

The Experimental Lakes Area in Northwestern Ontario, Canada, is a globally prominent freshwater research facility, conducting impactful whole-of-lake experiments on so-called 'pristine' lakes and watersheds. These lakes are located in traditional Anishinaabe (Indigenous) territory and the home of 28 Treaty #3 Nations, something rarely acknowledged until now. Indeed, Indigenous peoples in the area have historically been excluded from the research facility's governance and research.

The public health emergency of climate change: how/are Canadian post-secondary public health sciences programs responding?

Objective: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently issued a statement that the fate of human society and human health is at serious risk of catastrophic impacts unless we take bold action to keep global warming under 1.5 °C. In 2015, the Canadian Public Health Association noted emerging efforts to embrace intersectoral approaches to global change in public health research and practice.

Explaining the variability in cardiovascular risk factors among First Nations communities in Canada: a population-based study.

Background: Historical, colonial, and racist policies continue to influence the health of Indigenous people, and they continue to have higher rates of chronic diseases and reduced life expectancy compared with non-Indigenous people. We determined factors accounting for variations in cardiovascular risk factors among First Nations communities in Canada.

Methods: Men and women (n=1302) aged 18 years or older from eight First Nations communities participated in a population-based study.

The tools at their fingertips: How settler colonial geographies shape medical educators' strategies for grappling with Anti-Indigenous racism.

Settler colonialism implicates settler and Indigenous populations differently within ongoing projects of settlement and nation building. The uneven distribution of benefits and harms is a primary consequence of settler colonialism. Indeed, it is a central organizing feature of the settler state's governance of Indigenous societies and is animated, in part, through pervasive settler ignorance and anti-Indigenous racism, which has manifested in persistent health disparities amongst Indigenous peoples.

Awareness as a dimension of health care access: exploring the case of rural palliative care provision in Canada.

Objectives: In Canada, the rural elderly population is increasing in size, as is their need for palliative care services in these settings. This analysis aims to identify awareness-associated barriers to delivering rural palliative care services, along with suggestions for improving service delivery from the perspective of local health care providers.

Methods: A total of 40 semi-structured interviews with various formal and informal health care providers were conducted in four rural and/or remote Canadian communities with limited palliative care resources.

Linking Inuit Knowledge and Public Health for Improved Child and Youth Oral Health in NunatuKavut.

The oral health of Inuit children in Canada has been identified as a public health crisis. Although efforts are being made to identify and address ways to deal with this crisis, current policy and program approaches are largely entrenched within the prevailing paradigm of dental science to the exclusion of Indigenous people's understandings of health. This article reports qualitative findings of a larger study aimed at identifying, understanding, and addressing rates of oral disease among children living in NunatuKavut, a cluster of small, coastal Inuit communities located in southern Labrador, Canada.

Predictors of medical student interest in Indigenous health learning and clinical practice: a Canadian case study.

Background: Including content on Indigenous health in medical school curricula has become a widely-acknowledged prerequisite to reducing the health disparities experienced by Indigenous peoples in Canada. However, little is known about what levels of awareness and interest medical students have about Indigenous peoples when they enter medical school. Additionally, it is unclear whether current Indigenous health curricula ultimately improve students' beliefs and behaviours.

Community readiness and momentum: identifying and including community-driven variables in a mixed-method rural palliative care service siting model.

Background: Health service administrators make decisions regarding how to best use limited resources to have the most significant impact. Service siting models are tools that can help in this capacity. Here we build on our own mixed-method service siting model focused on identifying rural Canadian communities most in need of and ready for palliative care service enhancement through incorporating new community-driven insights.

Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds: First Nations Cohort Study Rationale and Design.

Background: This is the first national indigenous cohort study in which a common, in-depth protocol with a common set of objectives has been adopted by several indigenous communities across Canada.

Objectives: The overarching objective of the Canadian Alliance for Healthy Hearts and Minds (CAHHM) cohort is to investigate how the community-level environment is associated with individual health behaviors and the presence and progression of chronic disease risk factors and chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease (CVD) and cancer.

Methods: CAHHM aims to recruit approximately 2,000 First Nations indigenous individuals from up to nine communities across Canada and have participants complete questionnaires, blood collection, physical measurements, cognitive assessments, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Chemical and microbial characteristics of municipal drinking water supply systems in the Canadian Arctic.

Drinking water in the vast Arctic Canadian territory of Nunavut is sourced from surface water lakes or rivers and transferred to man-made or natural reservoirs. The raw water is at a minimum treated by chlorination and distributed to customers either by trucks delivering to a water storage tank inside buildings or through a piped distribution system. The objective of this study was to characterize the chemical and microbial drinking water quality from source to tap in three hamlets (Coral Harbour, Pond Inlet and Pangnirtung-each has a population of <2000) on trucked service, and in Iqaluit (population ~6700), which uses a combination of trucked and piped water conveyance.

"Put It Near the Indians": Indigenous Perspectives on Pulp Mill Contaminants in Their Traditional Territories (Pictou Landing First Nation, Canada).

Background: Pictou Landing First Nation (PLFN), a small Mi'kmaw community on the Canadian east coast, has had a relationship with a tidal estuary known as A'se'k for millennia. In the 1960s, it became the site of effluent disposal from a nearby pulp mill. Almost immediately, health concerns regularly and consistently reverberated throughout the community.

Revisiting the use of 'place' as an analytic tool for elucidating geographic issues central to Canadian rural palliative care.

In 2010, Castleden and colleagues published a paper in this journal using the concept of 'place' as an analytic tool to understand the nature of palliative care provision in a rural region in British Columbia, Canada. This publication was based upon pilot data collected for a larger research project that has since been completed. With the addition of 40 semi-structured interviews with users and providers of palliative care in four other rural communities located across Canada, we revisit Castleden and colleagues' (2010) original framework.

Increasing Response Rates on Face-to-Face Surveys with Indigenous Communities in Canada: Lessons from Pictou Landing.

Background: Designing an effective survey for gathering primary health data using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach in Indigenous communities in Canada has its challenges. Yet, the Pictou Landing First Nation (PFLN) Native Women's Group (NWG) and academic research partners achieved a 59% response rate.

Objectives: To share lessons learned with both campus and community-based research teams engaged in CBPR involving Indigenous communities on the process of team development, and particularly survey development and execution, as well as the factors that led to a reliable and valid household level environmental health survey that achieved a 59% response rate.

Palliating inside the lines: The effects of borders and boundaries on palliative care in rural Canada.

We draw lines to divide our world into specific places, territories, and categories. Although borders and boundaries are dynamic and socially constructed, their existence creates many broad impacts on our lives by geographically distinguishing between groups (e.g.

Asthma Prevention and Management for Aboriginal People: Lessons From Mi'kmaq Communities, Unama'ki, Canada, 2012.

Background: Asthma affects at least 10% of Aboriginal children (aged 11 or younger) in Canada, making it the second most common chronic disease suffered by this demographic group; yet asthma support strategies specific to Aboriginal peoples have only begun to be identified.

Community Context: This research builds on earlier phases of a recent study focused on identifying the support needs and intervention preferences of Aboriginal children with asthma and their parents or caregivers. Here, we seek to identify the implications of our initial findings for asthma programs, policies, and practices in an Aboriginal context and to determine strategies for implementing prevention programs in Aboriginal communities.

Water systems, sanitation, and public health risks in remote communities: Inuit resident perspectives from the Canadian Arctic.

Safe drinking water and wastewater sanitation are universally recognized as critical components of public health. It is well documented that a lack of access to these basic services results in millions of preventable deaths each year among vulnerable populations. Water and wastewater technologies and management practices are frequently tailored to local environmental conditions.

Contemporary programs in support of traditional ways: Inuit perspectives on community freezers as a mechanism to alleviate pressures of wild food access in Nain, Nunatsiavut.

Rapid socio-cultural, economic, and environmental changes are challenging wild food access and thus food security for Inuit in the Canadian Arctic. In response to the continued value and practice of harvesting wild foods, communities are establishing "wild food support" initiatives. This study evaluated how one such initiative, a community freezer, in Nain, Nunatsiavut supported wild food access for community members.