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June 3, 2020

New Project Underway: PHESC Cultural Safety Training Project

The Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health (at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health; DLSPH) has partnered with U of T’s Faculty of Medicine and Morning Star Lodge to create a series of online cultural safety training modules.  Led by Dr. Angela Mashford-Pringle (DLSPH), Dr. Erica Di Ruggiero (DLSPH), Dr. Carrie Bourassa (Morning Star Lodge, University of Saskatchewan), and Dr. Lisa Richardson (Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto), the project aims to provide accessible cultural safety training using Indigenous research methods.

                        

The PHESC Cultural Safety Training Project will first guide participants through foundational courses intended for all learners and will then provide profession-specific modules for those in the fields of health (e.g., nursing), education, and social services.

These modules will be developed by an Indigenous Content Committee—a group of Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and Indigenous Community Members from across Canada.  The training program will be evaluated using Indigenous research methods, including qualitative self-reflection, surveys, and sharing circles in order to assess the social, physical, emotional, and spiritual behaviours of the participants who complete the modules.

The project is currently in the early stages as the researchers are conducting a scoping review to collect information about extant cultural safety training programs.  Although it’s still early in the project’s timeline, the team has big plans: in the future, they hope to expand the modules to include other professions, such as corrections, policing, law, and other allied health professionals.  They also intend to provide links to local in-person cultural safety resources so that participants can continue their learning journeys.

If you’re interested in learning more about this project, you can find more information here.


Morning Star Lodge’s Cultural Safety Lab

Morning Star Lodge, one of the partners for PHESC’s Cultural Safety Training Project, houses a cultural safety lab.  Based in Saskatchewan, the lab conducts research to better understand the processes that have led to culturally unsafe environments for Indigenous people in Canada and to work towards establishing what culturally safe spaces could look like.

Dr. Carrie Bourassa, the Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Indigenous Peoples Health, was also featured in the 2019/2020 AGE-WELL NCE webinar series titled Culturally Safe Research Models in Indigenous Communities” where she discusses—among other things—community-based research and treating communities as co-researchers.  If you’d like to listen to Dr. Bourassa’s full webinar, follow this link!


 

Hearing Our Voices: An Indigenous Women’s Reproductive Health Curriculum

Dr. Lisa Richardson, Vice-Chair of Culture and Inclusion at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine, has helped to develop Hearing Our Voices: An Indigenous Women’s Reproductive Health Curriculum, an online course intended to promote culturally safe practices.

The pilot testing for these modules is coming to an end as of June 2020, after which time the course—and the website—will be updated.  If you would like to learn more about this project and stay up-to-date with its progress, please visit this link.


 

Welcome Back to Tenfold!

We are excited to bring you Season Two of our podcast about community engagement in the public health workforce, Tenfold. This season, we’re focusing on the social determinants of health: the causes of the causes of the causes of health. In addition to our regular episodes, we’re also premiering “mini-sodes”: short episodes focused on community engagement in a time of COVID-19. Listen to a preview of this season here, and check out Tenfold on Twitter!