Addressing Racism and Discrimination in Canada’s Health Systems Program – Program Recipients

This project aims to implement a 1-day cultural humility training course for health services providers in Saskatchewan where member friendship centres currently reside, with plans to expand training to all of Saskatchewan. The focus is on helping staff at Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) acute care facilities bridge the gap between the Indigenous community and SHA. The goal is to deliver at least 10 in-person training courses in each participating friendship centre community, develop lessons learned, reports, data, and provide recommendations on future training.

This project aims to design, implement and evaluate an accessible massive online open course for healthcare providers and other health services to students and professionals. The course aims to increase competence in providing culturally safe and high-quality services to Indigenous Peoples and will be able to accommodate a large number of students. Learners will: independently explore content (free access to all learners); work through flexible, self-directed learning across 2 courses resulting in micro-credentials; and work toward completing a 3-credit undergraduate or graduate course with instructor-led engagement and formal assessment.

Under the guidance and in partnership with the National Aboriginal Council of Midwives, this project aims to integrate and embed training in cultural safety, as well as combat anti-Indigenous racism across midwifery education, from pre-service (the midwifery bachelor's degree program) to in-service education and accreditation requirements. The goal is to effect personal, institutional and systemic change by developing impactful and innovative anti-Indigenous racism training. The training will address cultural safety and humility, provide meaningful implementable actions for allyship and increase institutional adoption of Joyce's Principle. It will also recognize and provide space and support for Indigenous midwifery students and midwives in practice who experience racism and discrimination.

This project aims to review and update the competencies in the Cultural Competence for Nursing Education document published in 2009 by the Canadian Indigenous Nurses Association (then, the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada), Canadian Association of School of Nursing and the Canadian Nurses Association. The competencies will be developed with the perspectives of Indigenous Peoples with lived and living experiences of racism and discrimination from health care providers.

This project aims to develop resources, tools and strategies to reduce systemic racism and discrimination and advance health equity for Indigenous Peoples by addressing cultural safety across health systems from a nursing perspective. The project aims to: understand the current state of standards, policies and programs aimed at cultural safety and cultural safety practices in health systems at the policy, structural and practitioner levels; develop resources and tools to establish cultural safety practice standards in nursing and Indigenous populations; develop a defined set of priority cultural safety indicators to measure cultural safety practice standards in nursing practice; and design and conduct knowledge translation and evaluation activities to advance knowledge sharing.

This project involves evaluating a curriculum on cultural safety for paediatric residents from the perspectives of both faculty and learners to determine its effectiveness, areas for improvement, opportunities for enhancing learning, retention and, changes in practice. The results of this evaluation will be used to update and improve the program, ensuring that it remains relevant and useful in its aims to foster cultural safety in health care.

This project aims to develop and implement the Indigenous Cultural Responsiveness Certification (ICRC) Initiative that will provide First Nations with the sustainable capacity and expertise to work with non-Indigenous organizations through a Knowledge Keepers Council (KKC) and administrative and technical support staff. This includes developing KKC: membership guidelines, appointment processes, terms of reference guide, and using the Cultural Responsiveness Framework as a foundation to establish ICRC accreditation protocols, requirements, competencies and standards that will guide non-Indigenous individuals and organizations in Saskatchewan, on how to respectfully and appropriately incorporate Indigenous traditions and knowledge within their programs, services and workplace environments.

The project aims to close the current service delivery gaps for Indigenous Peoples while providing opportunities for enhancing community health services in culturally appropriate ways. This model builds on File Hills Qu'Appelle Tribal Council Inc.'s affiliated entities, which deliver innovative programming that incorporates Indigenous cultural wellness and healing processes in other areas of the health system, particularly mental health, addictions services and services for at-risk clients. This project seeks to build on this capacity and experience by integrating these techniques into a primary care clinical setting. Together with their partners in the health system, File Hills Qu'Appelle Tribal Council Inc. will create an Indigenous cultural wellness clinic that will deliver a range of primary health care services to Indigenous clients in Fort Qu'Appelle, Saskatchewan.

This project includes developing a cultural safety training curriculum for mental health professionals grounded in experiential learning. It will apply a cultural lens to increase understanding about First Nations beliefs, values, experiences and understanding of health and wellness. As part of this project, a cultural safety measurement tool will also be developed that First Nations peoples can use to evaluate the cultural competency of organizations and practitioners. The goal is that this model will increase the capacity of mental health professionals in New Brunswick to provide culturally safe and inclusive mental health services for First Nations populations.

The project includes co-designing with Indigenous partners a cultural safety and humility assessment standard, assessment methods, resources and accreditation program activities. These will be used by health systems and health and social services organizations, to reflect Indigenous values and knowledge sources and meet the health and wellness priorities of Indigenous Peoples and communities.

Indigenous partners from across Canada will also be engaged in assessing the needs and designing a national cultural safety and humility standard that health and social service organizations across Canada can use to address systemic racism and discrimination experienced by Indigenous Peoples and communities in Canada's health systems.

This project aims to better support the health-related needs of Indigenous community members in the Ontario Central East region by improving coordination and access to supports and responding to the presence of racism and prejudice present in health care institutions. The project involves developing and delivering cultural safety training based on local Indigenous Knowledge and history for regional health care staff, thus promoting more culturally appropriate care for Indigenous patients; developing a voluntary self-identification process to increase accessibility to services for self-identifying Indigenous patients and families; and developing a complaints process for instances of racism and prejudice that are experienced by Indigenous patients.

This project aims to create a training program to: raise awareness of the issues and barriers to access to care for people from urban Indigenous communities who are homeless; propose tools to better intervene, better reach and accompany people from Indigenous communities; give an overview of the various realities experienced in health systems by people from Indigenous communities; and present Aboriginal navigation as a culturally safe approach within the public health system for people from Indigenous communities.

This project will develop a curriculum focused on Indigenous women's health across the lifecycle. The curriculum and resources will be piloted among frontline Indigenous staff in ten sites across Ontario and non-Indigenous health care workers in Thunder Bay. The project incorporates the lived experiences of Indigenous women, Elders, youth and health care professionals, with the goal of reducing racism and discrimination against Indigenous women within Ontario's health system and improving access to culturally safe health services. The aim is to develop a curriculum that can be provided on a wider scale across Ontario, and eventually to other Canadian provinces and territories.

This project involves hosting multiple engagement sessions, and an event, where the recipient will create a safe space and place for key stakeholders of Indigenous ways of being, doing and understanding to learn and share ways forward for addressing racism and discrimination within a healthcare setting. The information and knowledge gathered throughout these sessions would then be utilized for future program development with N'doo'owe Binesi, strategic planning, and reports.

The project aims to advance culturally safe, wrap-around care for Inuit in Ottawa, to improve patient experiences and health outcomes for Inuit in health care settings. It involves educating health care staff on anti-racism and discrimination; providing traditional Inuit materials and food in acute care settings; creating engagement structures with Inuit and health organizations; and conducting post-education evaluations using an existing Indigenous-led evaluation platform.

This project includes offering cultural competency trainings for public health staff and First Nations community health staff, thus increasing capacity to create culturally safe and inclusive health services. These trainings will help personnel to better understand customs when it comes to health and healing, enabling the health system to offer and deliver care that is culturally adapted, in an environment where Indigenous people seeking healthcare feel respected and safe.

This project is a part of a long term goal to develop, implement and evaluate a multi-dimensional approach to improving cultural safety knowledge, attitudes, skills and behaviours of University Health Network (UHN) personnel. This project focuses on building awareness and fostering respect for Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing; providing base level educational opportunities for staff and; creating an opportunity for local Indigenous community voices to be heard and integrated into future initiatives that address racism and discrimination at UHN.

This project will develop in-depth learning modules will be developed that go beyond the fundamental stages of cultural safety, to include more advanced topics such as application, clinical practice and leadership. The project's focus is on the diverse roles-based needs within health professional education, public health and health care systems. The project fills the gap of the current provincial cultural safety training approach, bridging education, clinical practice change and health systems change that are necessary to improve the patient experience.

As part of this project, the cultural safety training curriculum will be finalized for health care professionals and a toolkit developed. The curriculum and toolkit will be designed for scaling and sharing with other organizations across British Columbia. Indigenous community facilitators and workers will pilot the project and provide feedback based on their knowledge and lived experiences. The recipient will work with its network of 280 active Indigenous Elders to develop the materials.

This project involves: hiring an Indigenous nursing mentor who will advance a long-term strategy to recruit and support more Indigenous nurses across Yukon, and develop nursing-specific cultural safety policies, standards and education material; providing community outreach activities and workshops, developing opportunities to work in the health system and advancing culturally safe hospital policies for Indigenous youth; engaging Indigenous youth to develop and distribute life promotion kits and cultural interventions for Indigenous patients admitted to acute care for mental health concerns; and work to ensure Indigenous patients have access to culturally rooted mental health and self-care materials that promote and affirm life while in hospital.