Vaccine Mini-series:COVID-19 outreach in Peel Region

Uzma Ahsanullah and Navneet Dhillon from Indus Community Services in Peel Region join Andrea to talk about their work in one of Ontario’s COVID-19 “hotspots”. Uzma and Navneet talk about some of the challenges and successes in Peel and how they are supporting their community through COVID-19.

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Vaccine Mini-series: Focusing on disproportionately affected communities

In this episode, three members from the Ottawa Health Team join Andrea to talk about their work in supporting disproportionately affected communities. Kelli Tonner and Soraya Allibhai from the South-East Ottawa Community Health Centre and Karim Mekki from  Ottawa Public Health share how working directly with communities has enabled partners from the Ottawa Health Team to inform them, support them, and vaccinate them.

You can learn more about the Ottawa Health Team on their website. You can also read about the Community Development Framework that was establish prior to the pandemic and provided a foundation for their work. 

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Vaccine mini-series: Smudge COVID: an Indigenous youth-led project

Nikki Sengupta from the Indigenous Primary Health Care Council talks about a youth-led vaccine advocacy campaign.  Youth ambassador Dakota Boyer participated in the project and shares her ideas on making projects youth-led. #SmudgeCovid #4MyRelations #indigenousyouth4vaccines is a social media campaign on , Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok that aims to increase knowledge and understanding of vaccines, build vaccine confidence and reduce hesitancy among Indigenous youth from 15-24 years old. The project is funded by the National Reconciliation Program of Save the Children Canada.

Learn more about the program and watch an amazing series of digital stories created by youth in the project by following @IPHCC_ca on Twitter or IPHCC on Twitter and Instagram. Look for the #SmudgeCovid #4MyRelations #indigenousyouth4vaccines hashtags!

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Vaccine mini-series: Wise practices for COVID vaccinators

Nicole Blackman, Provincial Director of the Indigenous Primary Health Care Council (IPHCC) joins Andrea to talk about vaccinations and Indigenous communities. They discuss medical mistrust and the history between Indigenous communities, government and academic instructions that contribute to it. Nicole shares several different approaches for organizations to work with communities in a good way to deliver vaccinations.

To learn more about these wise practices, watch IPHCC's webinar and visit the website for more resources.

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Season wrap up

To wrap up the season, Andrea is joined by former Tenfold producer Anya Archer, and former PHESC staff and season 2 guest Robyn Kalda.

The power of language in community engagement - with Samiya Abdi

In this episode, Samiya Abdi joins host Andrea Bodkin to talk about the power of language and community. Samiya talks about the importance of active and passive language when referring to particular communities and groups. For example, passive terms such as “at risk” and “vulnerable” implies that that the community is innately at risk or vulnerable, and there is nothing that we can do about it. “Hard to reach” and “hard to serve” implies that it is the community itself that can’t be reached or can’t access services, for reasons of their own.

Active language, on the other hand, recognizes the systems, policies and structures that actively put communities at the margins.  These terms include “marginalized”, “raciliazed”, and “colonized”. These terms can bring discomfort to those who have power and privilege. With active language, the responsibility is placed on the service providers, rather than the communities seeking support. They force us to recognize the root causes of inequities and health risks. 

A current example is the higher rates of COVID-10 in raciliazed communities. These communities are more affected not because of race, but because of racism.  Andrea’s favourite blog, We Heart Health Literacy provides a helpful synopses of this.

As public health professionals, we need to be very aware of the terms we use, why and how we use those terms, who benefits from those terms, and what the impacts of using them are.

PHESC has created a number of online learning courses to support professionals

• Cultural safety, cultural humility, anti-oppression training - Indigenous specific
• Cultural safety, cultural humility, anti-oppression training - all priority populations
• Racial Health Equity: Embracing a decolonial, anti-racist practice

Visit the PHESC website for a full listing of courses and resources related to health equity

The role of community engagement in sustainability - with Jillian Kranias

In this episode guest-host Jillian Kranias talks with regular host Andrea Bodkin, about a recently published systematic review on sustainable health promotion programs, co-authored with Shawn Hakimi. The review identified 14 factors that can promote health promotion program sustainability, two of which are related to community engagement:

Fit and alignment refer to alignment between the program and the host organization’s mandate, as well as community needs, priorities and opinions.

Partnership with stakeholders, staff and community. The level of involvement of partners and communities impacted sustainability: for example, participatory planning, shared decision-making, and participatory budgeting.  

Papers referenced in this episode:     

Ammerman, A., Washington, C., Jackson, B., Weathers, B., Campbell, M., Davis, G., Switzer, B. (2002). The PRAISE! Project: A Church-Based Nutrition Intervention Designed for Cultural Appropriateness, Sustainability, and Diffusion. Health Promotion Practice, 3(2), 286-301. Retrieved July 11, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/26734292

Bodkin, A., Hakimi, S. Sustainable by design: a systematic review of factors for health promotion program sustainability. BMC Public Health 20, 964 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-020-09091-9

Hill K VF, Clemson L, Lovarini M, Russell M. Community falls prevention program sustainability guidelines and workbook. National Health and Medical Research Council; Victorian Government Department of Health. 2011. https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/218581/nhmrc_guidelines_and_workbook.pdf.

Whelan J, Love P, Millar L, Allender S, Bell C. Sustaining obesity prevention in communities: a systematic narrative synthesis review. Obesy Rev. 2018;19(6):839–51.

Wisener K, Shapka J, Jarvis-Selinger S. Sustaining health education research programs in Aboriginal communities. Glob Health Promot. 2017;24(3):49–58.

Additional helpful resources:

Program Sustainability Assessment Tool (PSAT) https://sustaintool.org/psat/

Survive and Thrive: Three steps to securing a program’s sustainability. https://communitysolutions.ca/web/guide-to-program-sustainability-2/

Participatory Evaluation Toolkit https://en.healthnexus.ca/sites/en.healthnexus.ca/files/resources/participatoryevaltoolkit.pdf

Community led initiatives - with Lisa Attygale

This episode, Lisa Attygale from Tamarack joins Andrea to talk about her new paper: Understanding Community-Led Approaches to Community Change. Lisa began researching for this paper when she noticed that organizations often use the term “community led” when the activities they called community led had a range, and many wouldn’t be classified as community led. Lisa reviewed 67 organizations that described themselves as community led approaches, and mapped their approaches from grass-roots approaches to consultation. Lisa strongly felt that we needed to gain understanding of the term “community led” and developed a spectrum to capture these approaches: from community informed to community owned to community shaped to community driven.

Lisa and Andrea talk about community led approaches, some of the barriers organizations might face in implementing them, and the role of power in working with community.

Useful reading and resources

Read Lisa’s paper here https://www.tamarackcommunity.ca/library/paper-understanding-community-led-approaches-community-change-lisa-attygalle and of course check out Tamarack’s multiple resources on community engagement https://www.tamarackcommunity.ca/communityengagement and collective impact https://www.tamarackcommunity.ca/collectiveimpact. Finally, check out Tamarack’s new Foundations of Community Engagement online course https://tamarack-institute.thinkific.com/courses/community-engagement-foundations 

Minisode: Racism and public health

At Tenfold we’ve been reflecting about racism in public health systems. Unfortunately, in many countries, public health organizations have a history of racism which affect their ability to engage communities meaningfully, productively, and safely. These stories are not always well known. In this minisode, Andrea discusses just a few examples from the United States and Canada. This is by no means a complete list or a complete history of racism in public health. This minisode and these episode notes are meant to bring a few of these situations to light, and encourage you to research further as part of your personal work.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment was run by the United States Public Health Service, with Tuskegee University, from 1932 to 1972. The study recruited 600 poor, black, illiterate farmers in order to observe the natural history of untreated syphilis. 400 of the men enrolled in the study tested positive for syphilis. They were not told of their diagnosis, nor, when penicillin became available as a treatment, were they offered treatment. Many of the study participants’ wives and children became infected over the course of the study. While the study was not secret (many papers were published on the results), a leak to the press ended the study in 1972. Twenty-five years later, President Bill Clinton apologized for the study. Read more about the study, racism and research in The Hasting Center’s 1978 report.

Andrea first read about the Tuskegee Experiment last year, when researching sustainable health promotion programs. This excellent article by Ammerman et al. talks about developing a church-based nutrition intervention next door to Tuskegee in the time of the President Clinton apology, and how understanding that context and building positive relationships was critical to the success of their program.

Canada has also conducted highly unethical studies involving raciliazed communities. A number of experiments were performed by various government departments and medical experts on malnourished children living in residential schools between 1942 and 1952. The purpose of the studies were to not to treat malnourishment, rather to examine the impact of dietary supplements. In some cases the supplement exacerbated the condition of the children; in other cases, medical treatments (including dental treatment) were withheld in order to study their effects.

From the 1940s to 1960s, Inuit in the far north were separated from their families and transported, by ship, to sanatoriums in the south of Canada. Many families never heard from – or about- their relatives after that. First Nations, Inuit and Metis people in Canada continue to suffer from higher rates of tuberculosis than the general population, due to poverty, crowded and inadequate housing, food insecurity, and inequitable access to health care.

During the 2009 H1N1 outbreak, leaders in First Nations reserves asked for supplies, such as vaccines, to fight the epidemic. Several reserves received shipments of body bags along with the anticipated face masks and sanitizer. The First Nations Drum reported that not only were the body bags not asked for, they arrived prior to the H1N1 vaccinations, which were requested.

When Andrea consulted with PHESC colleagues Erica De Ruggio and Angella Mashford Pringle, they offered these two questions for reflection:

1. Consider the levels of power that you, and your organization, have to maintain, change or disrupt systems
2. Reflect on your position in life: Power, Privilege and Positionality, and how your position impacts your work in public health and community engagement

 Studies mentioned in the podcast/episode notes:

Ammerman, A., Washington, C., Jackson, B., Weathers, B., Campbell, M., Davis, G., Switzer, B. (2002). The PRAISE! Project: A Church-Based Nutrition Intervention Designed for Cultural Appropriateness, Sustainability, and Diffusion. Health Promotion Practice, 3(2), 286-301. Retrieved July 11, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/26734292

Macdonald NE, Stanwick R, Lynk A. Canada's shameful history of nutrition research on residential school children: The need for strong medical ethics in Aboriginal health research. Paediatr Child Health. 2014;19(2):64. doi:10.1093/pch/19.2.64. Retrieved July 11, 2020 from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3941673/

Brandt, A. (1978). Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. The Hastings Center Report, 8(6), 21-29. doi:10.2307/3561468. Retrieved July 11, 2020 from https://www.jstor.org/stable/3561468?seq=1

Canadian Pediatric Society. Tuberculosis among First Nations, Inuit and Metis children and youth in Canada: beyond medical management. January 14, 2020. Retrieved July 11 2020 from https://www.cps.ca/en/documents/position/tuberculosis-among-first-nations-inuit-and-metis-children-and-youth

Useful reading and resources

Bassett, M. T., & Graves, J. D. (2018). Uprooting Institutionalized Racism as Public Health Practice. American journal of public health, 108(4), 457–458. Available from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5844417/ 

McKenzie K. (2003). Racism and health. BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 326(7380), 65–66. Available from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1125019/

National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health. Key public health resources for anti-racism action: a curated lists. 2018. Available from https://nccdh.ca/resources/entry/key-public-health-resources-for-anti-racism-action-a-curated-list

National Collaborating Centre for Determinants of Health. Let’s talk: Racism and health equity. 2017. Available from https://nccdh.ca/index.php?/resources/entry/lets-talk-racism-and-health-equity

The Power of Connection: a conversation with Pete Bombaci of the GenWell Project

In this episode, Pete Bombaci, founder of the GenWell Project, joins Andrea to talk about human connection and face to face social connection. In this global pandemic, in the time of physical distancing, the importance of human connection and interaction is more im