Details can be found here.

March 26, 2013
8:30am – 2:30pm
Munk School of Global Affairs
Campbell Conference Centre
Toronto Canada

Hosted by:
Institute for Health Policy Management and Evaluation
Dalla Lana School of Public Health
Institute for Circumpolar Health Research

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This seminar will engage researchers, health systems leaders, government and northern sectors involved in advancing health systems improvements in circumpolar regions.

Leaders in respective fields will be engaged and present their perspectives as they have approached and considered health systems challenges in their fields.

An audience of academics, health systems leaders and students will participate in discussions with the respective panels.

A jury of experts will be engaged so they may apply their knowledge and consider the seminar proceedings. The jury will summarize the day with a list of recommendations in response to the conference questions.

Conference questions:

1. What are the existing health systems challenges and resulting priority areas for health systems research in circumpolar regions?
2. What do we need from a scholary perspective to maximize uptake of data and evidence currently available?
3. What are the best practices for health research partnerships that engage academic partners, community sectors, health authorities and governments?

Reflective jury confirmed:

• Dr. Peter Bjerregaard, Professor of Arctic Health, Centre for Health Research in Greenland
• Dr. Malcolm King, Director Institute for Aboriginal Peoples Health
• Dr. Michael Jong, VP Medical Services, Labrador-Grenfell Health
• Dr. Jeremy Veillard, VP Research and Analysis, Canadian Institute for Health Information
• Additional confirmations pending

Investigator: Julia Christensen (ICHR Fellow)

Background

Housing insecurity has been a concern in the Northwest Territories (NWT), particularly in smaller communities, since the establishment of settlements and the introduction of state-run housing programs in the mid-20th century. Today, chronic housing need is worsening in most settlement communities. Meanwhile, homelessness is on the rise in urbanizing northern centres such as Yellowknife and Inuvik. Significantly, the vast majority of homeless men and women in both communities are Aboriginal and indigenous to the North. Despite living in their ancestral homeland, these men and women find themselves homeless, due to a confluence of many factors, including social exclusion, poverty, inefficient housing policy, dependency, and the historical trauma associated with rapid sociocultural change and colonization.

The idea of homelessness in northern communities conflicts with popular imaginations of the North, which often brand the region as a vast, resource-rich landscape where Indigenous people live in harmony with the land. Taking cues from geographers who have exposed homelessness in rural areas, this project challenges common conceptualizations of homelessness as ‘out of place’ in northern Canada. Moreover, by exploring the place-specificity of homeless geographies and advancing an explanation of how housing insecurity is expressed in the northern context, this research presents significant relevance to both academic and policy environments.

This SSHRC-funded postdoctoral research builds upon the scope of my doctoral work to include small, settlement communities. Here, I investigate both the spatialization of poverty and the discourse of dependency in the NWT, as well as how these processes drive geographies of disparity and detachment which in turn shape individual experiences with homelessness.

Investigator: Julia Christensen (ICHR Fellow)

Background

This project is a continuation of my work on homelessness and housing insecurity in the Canadian North. The vast majority of homeless men and women in Northwest Territories urban centres are Indigenous, a finding that echoes numerous other studies that have also found Indigenous people to be overrepresented in the homeless populations of cities across Canada. While the shifting dynamics of the housing and job markets, as well as those of Canadian social policy, can be linked to Indigenous homelessness just as it can be to homelessness among other demographic groups in Canada, little work has explored the particular reasons why Indigenous people in Canada are so highly overrepresented in the general homeless population.

In this project, I examine the multiple scales of homelessness, particularly in relation to Indigenous peoples and communities, where the scope of sociocultural change has been so wide reaching, and the pace so accelerated. In the context of the NWT, time and space have collided as the real implications of colonialism have been felt most intimately only as far back as two or three generations. Interactions between intimate, personal experiences and socio-structural relations are clearly apparent in geographies of Indigenous homelessness. What this means in terms of the homeless experiences of Indigenous people, however, is not well examined in the academic literature. In part, this is due to an inadequate explanation of what homelessness signifies in an Indigenous community context, and, subsequently, what the stakes of homelessness really are. How do we give adequate attention to the role of colonialism in shaping these homeless geographies? One way forward, I suggest, is to understand Indigenous experiences of homelessness as multi-scalar and at once collective and immediate.

Investigators: Julia Christensen (ICHR Fellow), Andrée Boisselle (York), Lisa Szabo-Jones (U of A), Christopher Cox (U of A)

Background

Through funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Trudeau Foundation, the Government of the Northwest Territories, and the Institute for Circumpolar Health Research, a workshop on research storytelling was held in Dettah, NT in June 2012. The workshop brought together Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars working with storytelling as a mode of knowledge production and sharing.

Currently, workshop participants are collaborating on a book project to be published by a major university press. The book explores storytelling as a mode of understanding and includes chapters from storytellers/scholars who bridge multiple contexts in their work—academic, community, spiritual, creative—to engage diverse audiences and inspire change in meaningful ways.

The overall theme tying the book’s chapters together is how storytelling as a mode of knowledge production and sharing builds new links between people and places. In other words, how storytelling contributes to relationship, a central, guiding component of responsible citizenship and environmental awareness. Moreover, we are also interested in discovering how storytelling encourages recognition of the power of language, and in so doing, offers a nuanced understanding of place(s) and a consideration of alternative expressions of citizenship in our communities.

ICHR Facilitator: Cindy Gilday

Funder: Climate Change and Health Adaptation Program for Northern First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Communities (Health Canada)

It has become an indisputable fact of life that Aboriginal peoples and northerners are being dramatically impacted by climate change, not only in its broad implications, but also at the individual and community level where life and livelihood patterns are being affected. The Arctic (North of 60) populations, peoples, lands, waters, animals and cultures are at stake. The increasing unpredictable weather impacts the ability of people to travel safely not only in traditional ways but also through modern means of transportation such as airplanes. Modern mobility is necessary to access food (community hunts) and emergency health services like expertise in disaster management and transportation safety. Most small health centres, if one is nearby, have no emergency service capacity. This is a health concern for most communities.

The intent of this proposal is to amplify the voices of the Elders, traditional harvesters and youth so they can have a chance to elaborate their own adaptation plans. In every community meeting in the Arctic, there has been a call for Elders to teach the youth about traditional ways of the land, so that the youth can retain their culture but also develop new research skills so they learn to adapt to their environment impacted by climate change while communicating these efforts to the rest of the world.

Recent tragic events in the Arctic have highlighted the desperate need in all of our communities for the knowledge and tools necessary to address emergency scenarios and adaptation plans. The intent is to ensure northern voices will lead in shaping these plans while leveraging this topic as a focus of research and as a tool for promoting research skills with the youth. The traditional knowledge participatory model will be central to bridging age- old methods of surviving on the land with the new realities of a North in transformation.

The plan is for Institute for Circumpolar Health Research to manage this project in partnership with the Dene Nation and in cooperation with the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, high schools in Yellowknife and Nunavut, as well as Ecology North, Western Arctic Moving Pictures, and the Frozen Eyes photography club. With their focus on Arctic emergency preparedness and management, the Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation and Munk School of Global Affairs will provide valuable expertise. Grand Chief and AFN Regional Chief Bill Erasmus has assigned Daniel T’seleie, Director Lands, Dene Nation, to work with Cindy Gilday of ICHR. Cindy will co-ordinate and lead this project. Two Gordon Foundation Fellows who are both Dene and live in Yellowknife will play key facilitation roles.

This youth project will build on an ArcticNet-supported youth photovoice project that was conducted in Inuvik last year. This is the first project for this First Nations region of the North. This project will emphasize youth research skills using video that will be shown at a roundtable national event to be organized by Gordon Foundation / Munk School of Global Affairs in Yellowknife later in the fall or winter. In the long term, the research skills developed by the Elders and youth will contribute greatly to future projects related to Climate Change and Health impacts on Arctic (north of 60) communities. The networking and community capacity building with northern youth and Gordon Foundation fellows will be invaluable for future generations.

The project was further supported by the Canada Centre for Global Security Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and the Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation.

Primary Investigator: James Ford, McGill University

ICHR Co-Investigator: Susan Chatwood

Background:

The Inuit Traditional Knowledge for Adapting to the Health Effects of Climate Change project (IK-ADAPT) is a trans-disciplinary project that combines scientific research and traditional knowledge to inform policy and programming needed to assist Inuit communities adapt to the health effects of climate change. Working closely with 6 communities across Arctic Canada and knowledge users at multiple levels, the project will examine ways to document, conserve, and promote Inuit traditional knowledge (IK) to help prevent, prepare for, and manage the impacts of climate change on health. The focus on IK reflects the continued importance of traditional approaches to health, where ‘health’ captures physical, mental and social well-being. It also reflects recognition of the importance of IK for climate adaptation, and concern across the North that this knowledge is being incompletely transmitted to younger generations.

» Project Website

ICHR Lead: Susan Chatwood PhD student IMS

Background:

Circumpolar regions, and the nations within which they reside, have recently gained international attention because of shared and pressing public policy issues such as climate change, resource development, endangered wildlife, and sovereignty disputes. These regions also draw attention in the health sectors because of the need for health systems to accommodate and respond to an environment with significant health disparities, Indigenous populations, and the logistical challenges inherent in providing equitable services in geographically dispersed regions with a harsh and rapidly changing climate. This complex environment influences health systems performance, yet measures which highlight performance and provide guidance improvements in this context have not been described, or developed. This projects sets out to first describe the consistency and completeness of health systems stewardship within circumpolar states, so we might understand the foundation and guiding forces at play. Secondly the project will identify quality indicators and develop frameworks that will measure performance and aid in the direction of health systems improvements in this unique and challenging environment.

(1) University of Toronto, (2) Statens Institut for Folkesundhed, (3) Syddansk Universitet og Departementet for Sundhed, Grønland, (4) Institute for Circumpolar Health Research, (5) Government of the Northwest Territories, and (6) University Manitoba Health Sciences Library

Obesity prevalence is an increasing focus of public health concern in circumpolar populations. In adults, the rise in obesity is commonly accompanied by the development of insulin resistance and lipid profiles indicative of significant metabolic and cardiovascular disease risk. Age of obesity-onset is decreasing in children and there is evidence that childhood obesity is tracking to adulthood.

Numerous systematic reviews of obesity exist, however few are related to aboriginal populations specifically and none address the circumpolar context. In contrast much recent research effort has yielded new findings on obesity and related factors in circumpolar populations. The results of comprehensive health assessment surveys in Canada and Greenland are now available and there is additional literature on obesity from populations health studies in Scandinavia, Siberia and Alaska. The present study undertakes a systematic review of the literature on obesity in circumpolar populations and examines studies of obesity prevention and intervention in indigenous populations facing rapid nutrition transition.

After consulting with research advisors, the results of the scoping review was published in the International Journal of Circumpolar Health. After settling on a set of objectives, the methodological details of the review were worked out using international models of systematic review to design a methodologically rigorous project so that our results will be useful to regional and community decision-makers, health service providers and policy-makers.

The published report can be found here:

Obesity studies in the circumpolar Inuit: a scoping review.
Citation: Int J Circumpolar Health 2012, 71: 18698.