Pathways Funding: Research and training chairs

August 2013

The Pathways research and training chairs are designed to support researchers at the mid-career level. All funded chairs will focus on Aboriginal peoples’ health and contribute both to the knowledge base in an exemplar area and to increasing research on themes that cut across the four exemplars.

Examples of potential Pathways research and training chairs

  • Aboriginal Ways of Knowing in relation to population health interventions
    Pathway projects will also encourage use of Aboriginal Ways of Knowing, which includes knowledge of and experience with healing practices both ceremonial and physical, such as herbal treatments. These practices include the concepts of health, wholeness and resilience, and approaches to wellness and healing. Maintaining wellness, including mental, emotional and spiritual health, is often based on Aboriginal teachings and ceremony, which provide a basis for positive self-image and healthy identity. Aboriginal knowledge of the land and its ecology helps sustain health for many First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples. Aboriginal Ways of Knowing must inform interventions for them to succeed, because they will be more culturally appropriate and more meaningful to Aboriginal peoples, and be more accepted than non-Aboriginal approaches.

  • Scalability of interventions of relevance to Pathways
    To better understand what programs and policies will work to promote health equity, there is an urgent need to collaborate with and learn from Aboriginal communities. Once Aboriginal communities have a better idea of what works to promote health equity, they will be in a position to implement and scale-up interventions to reach more people and share the benefits broadly and equally, achieving health equity for all.

  • Economics of population health interventions involving Aboriginal peoples
    Research and economic analysis on scaling-up interventions, taking into account a range of viewpoints (perhaps from Aboriginal people and healthcare decision-makers), and studying shifts in costs from treatment to prevention.

  • Aboriginal health policy
    Aboriginal health research should generate both knowledge and action. In particular, research should guide policy and program development and delivery of health services for Aboriginal people.

  • Gender and health related to Pathways
    Research to strengthen population health interventions by specifically taking into consideration the role of gender and sex of Aboriginal women and men on health outcomes.

  • Surveillance and Pathways/Aboriginal health
    Research focusing on reorienting surveillance systems to support the study of interventions that take into consideration Aboriginal concerns and ethical considerations.

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