First Nations and Inuit Health
Health Canada is committed to delivering health programs and providing high-quality health care to First Nations people and Inuit. To address the health issues faced by the Aboriginal people in Canada, the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch at Health Canada carries out the following strategies and initiatives:
Aboriginal Health Human Resources Initiative
At the September 2004 First Ministers Meeting, the federal government announced that it would be allocating $100 M over the next five years towards an Aboriginal Health Human Resources Initiative (AHHRI).
The AHHRI will have three main areas of focus:
- to increase the number of Aboriginal people working in health careers;
- to adapt health care educational curricula to support the development of cultural competencies; and
- to improve the retention of health care workers in Aboriginal communities.
Health Canada will work with Aboriginal, federal, provincial, territorial and health professional associations as well as educational institutions to develop and implement the AHHRI.
The AHHRI will build on the work already underway through the Pan-Canadian Health Human Resources Strategy.
Children's Oral Health Initiative
The Children's Oral Health Initiative (COHI) was developed as a means to address the disparity between the oral health of First Nations and Inuit and that of the general Canadian population. COHI was launched on a test basis in Fall 2004.
COHI focuses on the prevention of dental disease and promotion of good oral health practices. The goal of COHI is to shift the emphasis from a primarily treatment based approach to a more balanced prevention and treatment focus. The initial focus for oral health promotion will be directed at three target groups:
- pregnant women and primary caregivers;
- pre-school children, 0-4 years of age; and
- school children, 5-7 years of age.
Health Canada expects that the COHI, once fully implemented in subsequent years, will result in significant improvement of the oral health in First Nations and Inuit.
Targeted Immunization Strategy
Historically, the Canadian on-reserve First Nations (FN) population has had estimated immunization rates 20% lower than the general population and has suffered from higher rates of vaccine-preventable diseases. Some of these diseases result in significantly more hospitalization for Aboriginal people than in the general population (e.g. Aboriginal children under one year of age are hospitalized 50 times more frequently with streptococcal pneumonia, and 80 times more frequently with chickenpox than non-Aboriginal children).
Federal Ministers have recognized the rates of vaccine-preventable diseases in FN children on-reserve as a priority issue. In 2003, $32M were dedicated over five years toward the development and implementation of the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch Targeted Immunization Strategy (FNIHB-TIS) to increase immunization coverage rates and ensure access to newly recommended vaccines.
The goal of the program is to provide a strategy that integrates with the Canadian national immunization strategy, resulting in the reduced incidence of vaccine-preventable diseases and their sequelae by March 2008.
The objectives of the program are to:
- Improve the coverage rates for routine immunizations in the targeted population of FN children under six years of age living on-reserve , and move towards the international immunization coverage target of 95%;
- Implement newly recommended vaccines ( conjugate pneumococcal, conjugate meningococcal C, and varicella [chickenpox] ) across the country or the targeted population ;
- Improve the data and understanding of immunization coverage rates, the incidence of vaccine-preventable diseases, barriers to immunization and best practices in implementation.
Bench-marking surveys of FN immunization coverage, immunization best practices, and immunization knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of parents and health care workers were completed in March 2005. Final reports will be released later in 2005.
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