Sneak peek given into Indigenous health program

By Lethbridge Herald on June 13, 2023.

Steffanie Costigan
LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE REPORTER

In celebration of the National Indigenous People’s Month, Alberta Health Services (AHS) continued its month-long Zoom event on Thursday at noon. 

Although the original discussion for addiction and recovery did not go as planned, AHS had Mike Sutherland and Shang Dong spoke on “Bridging the gap: A look into Canada’s first pediatric Indigenous health program.”

Sutherland, of Indigenous Counselling Services of Alberta, talked about the Indigenous health program and the team they have participating on it.

“We should not be the only, you know, a pediatric Indigenous health program. We have a pretty comprehensive, multidisciplinary team. We have physicians from our RN case managers that manage our caseloads and who also are quite involved with the complex discharges for our patients going back to community. We have our pediatric social workers. Shang is our research and evaluation advisor,” said Sutherland.

Sutherland said they were not planning on presenting about the Indigenous health program until next year, but given the opportunity, they decided to share a sneak peek into it. 

Sutherland talked about the inclusion of families they hope to have within the Indigenous health program during the patient’s stay.

“I think Indigenous health, for a variety of reasons, safety is always a primary concern, right? And so that’s a piece that would help the patient and family would help them navigate the hospital and basically stay with them.”

Dong, research and evaluation advisor of the Indigenous health program, shared a look into the program with a slide show going into detail about the program’s unique services, impact, and resources. 

Dong talked about the aim of Indigenous pediatric health care programs in Canada and the cultural practices incorporated into the health program.

“We aim to provide hardware support, Indigenous children and families, especially those living in rural and remote communities. . . Not only was the program developed out of the ceremony, the cultural and ceremonial elements have also been integrated into our program model and our daily practices. We believe that only Indigenous people can provide data solutions,” Dong shared.

Dong talked about the importance and value the program has to incorporate Indigenous and Western world views. 

“I think it’s very important to actually live that and have that value, which is also another kind of value our program holds, which is to incorporate and integrate both Western and Indigenous world views and cultures and approaches.”