Click here to view the embedded video.

Dr. Behn-Smith is currently the Director of Education for the University of Alberta’s Indigenous Health Initiatives Program and is a member of the board for the Indigenous Physicians Association of Canada. She previously served as the Director for the Northeast Community Health Clinic training site in Edmonton and is a co-principal investigator with the Alberta Network Environments for Aboriginal Health Research. Dr. Behn-Smith is popularly known for her hosting role on “Medicine Woman,” a 13 episode television series exploring traditional healing practices from around the world.

The Department looks forward to continuing to provide excellent aboriginal postgraduate medical education under Dr. Behn-Smith’s guidance. Please join us in welcoming Dr. Behn-Smith to the Department of Family Practice.

Photo Courtesy of Tribune Media Services Inc.

Aboriginal Health Summer Institute: June 6-10
Centre for Aboriginal Health Research (CAHR), University of Victoria

CAHR is excited to announce our first Summer Institute in Aboriginal Health (SI-1). This week-long interdisciplinary course is open to all, and will provide participants with a comprehensive examination of Aboriginal health research and knowledge translation. Participants will acquire skills in: critically assessing Aboriginal public health and social policy; approaches to Aboriginal and public health research and service delivery, examining life course and social determinants; community-based intervention and program evaluation research; evidence-based health, social and economic policy development; and ethical frameworks for Aboriginal health research. Participants will also learn skills in preparing successful funding proposals.

·        For course information please contact Lloy Wylie @ lloyw@uvic.ca

·        For lodging information or to register, please contact Robynne Edgar at redgar@uvic.ca

Cost per participant – $500.00 (includes books and welcoming feast)

(space is limited so register early!)

The UBC Learning Circle came to a strong close on April 26th in our year-end session with Dr. Martin Brokenleg discussing “Cultural Assets, Resilience and Aboriginal People’s Health.” Dr. Brokenleg is an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, co- founder of the Circle of Courage model, Dean of the Circle of Courage Institute, and serves as Vice President of Reclaiming Youth International. We thank Dr. Brokenleg for his inspiring session!

The UBC Learning Circle, a partnership between the UBC Division of Aboriginal People’s Health (DAPH), First Nations and Inuit Health (FNIH), and the First Nations Health Council (FNHC), is an ongoing video conferencing initiative that encourages sharing knowledge to create dialogue between communities about our health and well-being. With our community partners, we have initiated bi-weekly learning conversations on topics that matter
to community members.    To date we have hosted/facilitated over 40 learning circle sessions and 3 speaker series sessions in areas such as holistic health and healing; alcohol and drug prevention; cultural safety; healthy youth; mental health; women’s and men’s health. In some weeks, there have been over 20 communities participating. The format of the circle is to invite recognized academics in the topic area as well as community members to co-present and then dialogue and answer questions other communities may have.

Going into its fourth year, the Learning Circle will be undergoing some exciting changes. We will be continuing and expanding on the success of the Learning Circle by (1) increasing the number of sessions; (2) increasing the communities participating; (3) increasing the types of community members attending (i.e. health professionals, teachers, youth, mothers, elders, etc; (4) finding ways to include visiting Indigenous academics in special sessions; (5) investigating ways to offer academic credits and laddering into academic programs and/ or credentialing associations; (6) developing partnerships with other schools and departments at UBC and other institutions to increase the variety and offerings of sessions, and (7) redesigning the Learning Circle resource website to further support the activities and make the website more user friendly. To support this dialogue and knowledge sharing, our new website: (www.learningcircle.ubc.ca), will correspond with the launch of the Learning Circle in October 2010. Some new features include: an event calendar to keep up to date on upcoming sessions, news updates with a comments option, a Facebook page, a Youth section, as well as videos, references, articles and links related to the topics discussed in the weekly Learning Circles.

The Learning Circle runs every Wednesday from 9 to 10:30am with a facilitator and invited expert guests to discuss topics relating to health and healing. Past participants will continue to receive event posters by email, or may follow the Learning Circle website event calendar. If you would like to be added to the Learning Circle mailing list or have more information, please contact Jamie Witt at aph.assistant2@familymed.ubc.ca .

The Division of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health, in collaboration with the University of Melbourne, First Nations Studies and Arts ISIT at UBC, the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, and Xay’tem Longhouse Interpretive Centre/SFU, is working to address these issues through an online course that will compare Indigenous experiences of colonization. Piloting in September 2010, IHHS 409 is a 3-unit intensive, online, cross-institutional course which provides students the opportunity for comparative inquiry of Indigenous experiences of colonization and the manifestations of that experience in the contemporary socio-cultural environment. Part of the course will focus on the residential school experience in Canada, while the University of Melbourne will teach about colonization from an Australian perspective. Lyana Patrick, Education Coordinator for the Division of Aboriginal People’s Health and a key developer of the course, sees this as a “…really unique and exciting aspect of the course, very innovative and useful for medical students.”

Through the use of digital interactive technology, students will work together with educators from across the globe. The course is informed and guided by Indigenous knowledge and will draw upon a range of disciplines such as public health, history, sociology and public policy. The seed of its creation was planted during a Universitas 21 (an international network for higher education) visit that Shaun Ewen made to Leah Walker and the Division of Aboriginal People’s Health in Vancouver in October 2006. They realized quickly their many interests in common, and in particular the wish to have a positive impact on the health outcomes of Indigenous people. In both Canada and Australia, Aboriginal people’s health status is significantly lower than the general population. While the specific details of colonial history of the two countries differ, the impacts of those processes are quite similar.

Students will work collaboratively via an interactive course website. Assignments range from self-reflective essays, to collaborative role-plays centered on historical colonial interactions and relationships. Students will review historic documents and video interviews with residential school survivors, elders, and academics via the course website. The course will close with a healing circle led by videoconference between the two sites, which will give students the opportunity to reflect upon their experience and respond to the subject material in a safe and respectful environment.