The new initiative aims to transform Indigenous people’s experiences in the BC healthcare system. Led by Emily Carr’s Aboriginal Gathering Place and Health Design Lab, the Decolonizing the Healthcare System through Cultural Connections project will work to improve healthcare practices and systems that have historically marginalized and harmed Indigenous individuals and communities.

The Vancouver Foundation’s ‘Social Innovation & Systems Change Grant’ will enable project leaders Brenda Crabtree, Director of Emily Carr’s Aboriginal Programs, and Caylee Raber, Director of Emily Carr’s Health Design Lab, to initiate change to healthcare from an Indigenous perspective, through the innovative use of Indigenous-led arts and material practice to facilitate dialogue, relationship building and knowledge sharing between Indigenous people and healthcare practitioners.

These ongoing harms, the grant proposal explains, are due to an inadequate understanding amongst many healthcare practitioners and policymakers of Indigenous worldviews, lived experiences and the impacts of colonial policy on the health of Indigenous people.

Monitoring and evaluation throughout the entire process will also provide an evolving model for best practices, and help inform what will eventually become a replicable framework for similar initiatives in other jurisdictions. Ideally, insights will be shared with the First Nations Health Authority and Provincial Health Services Authority as the program reaches its third year.

Full story by Perrin Grauer: https://www.ecuad.ca/news/2019/aboriginal-gathering-place-health-design-lab-push-for-systems-level-change-with-decolonizing-healthcare-project