Seasons of Wellness

Seasons of Wellness

mars 25, 2015

Community engagement is a promising practice that cuts across strategies to reduce social and health inequities.  Northern Health in British Columbia undertook a community engagement process with northern Aboriginal communities of building relationships and working collaboratively to address issues stemming from marginalization and colonization to achieve a common goal of improving health for their people. 

Julie Kerr (Past Director, Population Health) and her colleagues in Population Health started by worked closely with the Executive Director of Aboriginal Health to be culturally appropriate in service planning and delivery.

Through this partnership, it became clear to Julie and her team that it is essential to recognize, acknowledge and respect cultural values, norms and historical experiences when engaging members of the Aboriginal community.  Part of this was about building trust and waiting to be invited to participate in planning, development and implementation of health services in their Aboriginal communities.

Once trust was established, the community partners fully engaged in the process of identifying their own health needs and priorities.  Although the initial plan was to work with each community individually, many of the same issues were raised in each community.  In the end they all agreed to work together to develop a “calendar and toolkit” that would stay in the communities and outlive the health care providers who frequently come and go.

The Seasons of Wellness project was born and together the community and health partners developed a culturally sensitive health promotion toolkit organized around a seasonal calendar.  The toolkit includes posters, brochures and a calendar template that are culturally appropriate and include images and messages from the specific communities in which they are used.

The Seasons of Wellness project was centered on the belief that community partners come with a wealth of knowledge and provide tremendous value.  According to Kerr, the success of the Seasons of Wellness project can be credited to a number of factors, including:

  • Partnership and goodwill – underpinned with a strong partnership within the health authority between Public Health and Aboriginal Health.
  • Trust – as a focus of the work at the beginning to reassure community partners that Northern Health wanted to hear from and respect the community.
  • Patience and commitment– as the project evolved from a 6-month to 2-year initiative
  • Use of students – as a way to leverage limited resources and no dedicated budget.
  • Community participation – by including members from the Aboriginal communities throughout the process to develop and validate the toolkit.
  • Cultural sensitivity – by recognizing the inadequacy of existing health promotion resources for Aboriginal communities.
  • Creative communication – through the use of storytelling and photos to appeal to the oral traditions of the Aboriginal community.

The Seasons of Wellness project is an example of a partnership that embraced the concept of community engagement by recognizing the valuable contributions members of the Aboriginal community had to offer to identify issues of concern and solutions to address them.

More information about the Seasons of Wellness project can be obtained by contacting Theresa.Healy@northernheatlh.ca.

Please visit the NCCDH Resource Library for related materials, including:

We would like to hear from you!  What have your successes been in using community engagement as a practice to improve health equity?  What resources do you find helpful?  Please send your ideas and examples to Lesley Dyck, Knowledge Translation Specialist.

With thanks to Helena Wall, Julie Kerr, Theresa Healy, and Agnes Snow for their help in preparing this story.

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