Through Their Eyes
This past week I attended the International Meeting on Indigenous Children’s Health in Albuquerque New Mexico. I was there with Dr Breanna Davis, a Family Medicine resident in Prince Albert, presenting research related to Making The Links.
Each year the College of Medicine’s Making the Links program gives medical students the opportunity to work in Northern Saskatchewan (Ile a-la-Crosse and Buffalo River Dene Nation), in the SWITCH clinic in Saskatoon, and in the rural communities of Mozambique in South-East Africa. One of the program’s goals is for students to gain firsthand knowledge of the social factors influencing health by living among and working with diverse peoples.
Last year Dr Davis, her Family Medicine colleague Dr John Dosman, PhD student Dan Fuller and I added a new element to Making The Links: Through their Eyes. Through Their Eyes is a Photovoice project. Young people in Ile a-la-Crosse and Dillon were given disposable cameras and asked to take pictures illustrating what health means to them. They then worked with the medical students participating in Making the Links to reflect on what the pictures meant and what could be done in their communities to address the health concerns they had identified.
To me, this is a great small-scale example of how government can work with communities to hear their concerns. We need to work with communities to identify and understand challenges and strengths, be they in health, education, the environment, economic opportunities or other areas of concern. We then continue to work alongside the communities, helping them to identify and implement the changes they need. This sort of work, adapted to different needs in different communities, could happen on a much larger scale in our party and our province. This would lead to greater citizen involvement in decision-making and policies that better represent local needs, local understanding, and local strengths.
The Third International Meeting on Indigenous Child Health brought together health care professionals, researchers, government representatives and community organizers to focus on innovative clinical care models and community-based public health approaches for children and youth in indigenous communities in the US, Canada, and
internationally. We were very honoured to be accepted to present our research at the meeting and pleased by the positive response.
Dr Davis reflected that, “We met dozens of people from across North America who wanted to replicate this idea in their own communities. People were really impressed with how we had managed to engage youth in identifying social and environmental factors affecting public health.”
As well as presenting our own research we were inspired by innovative approaches that have been taken in working with indigenous communities throughout North America to better address the health disparities that continue to exist. We have brought home a number of innovative ideas for addressing dental care, sexual health education, suicide prevention, and methods of connecting with youth that I hope to integrate into my work with First Nations and Metis communities and into the policies of the New Democratic Party.
This sort of collaboration and sharing of best-practices with people who face similar issues around the world can help us to identify approaches that have worked in other places and consider applying them here at home. It can also be a forum for Saskatchewan to share its successes. Our research and that of a number of other presenters from Saskatchewan, such as Dr Mehtar and Gary Beaudin’s presentation regarding the pediatric clinic at St Mary’s school in inner-city Saskatoon, highlights both the challenges we face and our willingness to be creative in addressing them. This is all a part of an evidence-based approach to policy that can take us from complaining about our problems to solving them. I am encouraged by this experience and eager to continue work with the people of Saskatchewan, young and old, to build a healthier society.
