Canada

Canada

A substantial part of CIET's work in Canada has been in partnership with Aboriginal peoples. Since 1995, CIET has aimed to build research and planning capacities in Aboriginal communities across Canada, so that they are able to design and carry out their own research with little external assistance. We have collaborated with Aboriginal organizations and band councils in the following initiatives:

Cigarette use among Native Canadian youth in Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1995
First Nations Youth Inquiry into Tobacco Use, 1996
Aboriginal Youth Resilience to HIV/AIDS (ACRA), 1998-present
Problems of Urban Aboriginal Youth, 1996
AFN evaluation of the Canada Prenatal Nutrition Programme, 2001-2003
Anisnabe Kekendazone - Ottawa ACADRE centre, 2002-present
The Aboriginal Community Youth Resilience Network (ACYRN), 2005-present

CIET researchers in Wekweti, NT, where they built community partnerships to study Aboriginal youth resilience to HIV/AIDS

In the course of this work we have partnered with major national Aboriginal organizations, including Assembly of First Nations, Congress of Aboriginal Peoples, Métis National Council, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and Native Women’s Association of Canada. We have worked with, or are currently linked to, Nechi Institute, Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network (CAAN), Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay, Native Counselling Services of Alberta, Tlicho Community Services Board, The National Aboriginal Circle against Family Violence, Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project, and First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada.

Although there is a wide range of relationships, some very new and others quite mature, community-led research and capacity building are at the core of these joint efforts.

A special collection of articles on CIET's work with Aboriginal groups in Canada is published in the Summer 2008 issue of Pimatisiwin: A Journal of Indigenous and Aboriginal Community Health.

To help build health research capacities among the Inuit in northern Canada, CIET has established an Inuit Research and Planning Winter Institute starting in 2008.

Local Public Health Infrastructure Development (LoPHID)

From 1998 through 2000, CIET worked on Health Canada’s LoPHID project in five health regions in the Atlantic Provinces (Labrador, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia Northern Region, Nova Scotia Eastern Region, Prince Edward Island). The aim of LoPHID was to increase local capacity to plan strategically, obtain local evidence and put it to work for better health. The partner health regions focused on a variety of public health issues, including perinatal care, youth resiliency, breastfeeding and heart health. Public health nurses who participated in LoPHID received substantial additional training and four of them obtained master’s degrees in epidemiology through CIET.