Healthy aging in place

Improving rural and northern Aboriginal seniors’ health through policy and community level interventions (2011-2014)

Wuskiwiy-tan! & Ta-Nigahniwhak!

Our research program on healthy aging in rural Saskatchewan Métis Community is framed through two connected projects that consider aging well across the lifecourse. Wuskiwiy-tan! (Let’s Move) is focused on seniors and Ta-Nigahniwhak! (They Will Be Leaders) is focused on youth.

Northern Saskatchewan HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C awareness initiative

The major objective of this research project, conducted between October 2002 and June 2005, was to collect baseline information on northern peoples' perceptions and experiences of HIV/AIDS, as well as to identify local and regional capacities and gaps for preventing and managing HIV/AIDS. Because hepatitis C comes to communities in many of the same ways as HIV and AIDS, it was also included in the research.

Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Health

The role of culture in population health is increasingly coming under intense scrutiny at the conceptual and applied levels. This program of research is investigating the role of culture as a determinant of health with Aboriginal community research partners through the concept of “cultural vitalization.” This approach seeks to examine culture in population health as a multiple and dynamic set of phenomena, rather than historical and static.

The determinants of TB transmission in the Canadian-born population of the Prairie provinces

Despite a known cure, TB continues persists as an international public health crisis. In Canada, the disease disproportionally affects First Nations people and the foreign-born. On the Prairies, rates are 30 times higher in First Nations than for the rest of the Canadian-born population, and repeated outbreaks in reserve communities have put elimination efforts back decades.