Indigenous Health Promotion and Cultural Safety Lab

Lead Investigator Dr. Donna Kurtz

In this lab, we work with Indigenous Peoples and multi-sector community partners to create culturally safe ways to foster respectful non-racist, non-discriminatory health care provision and policy change. Our work includes decolonizing approaches for community-led holistic health research that honours local knowledge and benefits all generations within communities. bWWe also adapt/refine cultural safety education according to community needs, and study Indigenous nursing recruitment and retention. Current projects focus on working with urban, urban-rural/remote Aboriginal communities to identify gaps, and recommend culturally relevant ways to integrate traditional and mainstream services in the prevention, treatment, and self-management of diabetes and obesity, and the development of a cultural safety curriculum.

Research collaborators:

• Charlotte Jones (Medicine, UBC), Dr. Mary Jung (Health and Exercise Science, UBC Okanagan), Dr. Pete Hutchinson, (Health and Exercise Science, UBC Okanagan); Ms. Jessie Nyberg, Secwepemc Elder, UBC Okanagan Adjunct)
• Edna Terbasket (Ki-Low-Na Friendship Society), Rosanna McGregor (Cariboo Friendship Society), Patricia Wilson (Vernon First Nations Friendship Centre)
• Danielle Wilson, Leslie Bryant MacLean, Brad Anderson (Interior Health)
• Heather Gifford, Whanganui, New Zealand

Current students/trainees:

• Brittany Swanson, MSN student
• Michael Jonasson, MPH, student (Simon Fraser University)