Our Research Projects

A total of 18 interviews, with 9 children and 9 caregivers, were required to achieve a stable version of the survey. The children ranged in age from 8 to 18 years. Revisions were required for 19 questions. Most of the revisions were minor linguistic changes. In addition, 6 questions were deleted due to consistent problems and 4 questions were created to address gaps identified during the process. Community members confirmed the appropriateness of the measure for their community and communicated their pride in their youth’s role in the development of this survey.
The result was a 58-question version of the ACHWM that was consistently interpreted and culturally appropriate, and had face validity confirmed by experts from the community, children and their parents/caregivers. The ACHWM is ready to be assessed for relevance to other Aboriginal communities.

The participants ranged in age from 8.2 to 17.7 years (mean age=12.3). Through innovative methods, children and youth identified 206 concepts representing the 4 quadrants of the Medicine Wheel: emotional, spiritual, physical and mental. These concepts were refocused, in collaboration with the community, to create a new 60-item measure of health and well-being that was primarily positive in focus.
This study demonstrates the success of implementing a unique process of photovoice in combination with bicycling and informed by an Aboriginal framework. The results confirm the distinct conceptualization of health and well-being in this population and underscore the necessity for a culturally appropriate measure. This study also produced a first draft of the Aboriginal Children’s Health and Well-being Measure (ACHWM).

Paired ACHWM and Ped sQL scores were available for 48 participants. They had a mean age of 14.6 (range of 7 to 19) years and 60.4 % were girls. The Pearson’s correlation between the total ACHWM score and a total PedsQL aggregate score was 0.52 (p = 0.0001). The correlations with the Physical Health Summary Scores and the Psychosocial Health Summary Scores were slightly lower range ( r = 0.35 p = 0.016; and r = 0.51 p = 0.0002respectively) and approached the expected range. The ACHWM Quadrant scores were moderately correlated with the parallel PedsQL domains ranging from r = 0.45 tor = 0.64 (p ≤ 0.001). The Spiritual Quadrant of the ACHWM did not have a parallel domain in the PedsQL.

These results establish the validity of the ACHWM. The children gave this measure an Ojibway name, Aaniish Naa Genii, meaning “how are you?”. This measure is now ready for implementation and will contribute to a better understanding of the health of Aboriginal children.

Health solutions for Aboriginal children should be guided by their community and grounded in evidence. This manuscript presents a prospective cohort study protocol, designed by a community- university collaborative research team. The study’s goal is to determine whether community-based screening and triage lead to earlier identification of children’s emotional health needs, and to improved emotional health 1 year later, compared to the standard referral process. We are recruiting a community- based sample and a clinical sample of children (ages 8 to 18 years) within one Canadian First Nation. All participants will complete the Aboriginal Children’s Health and Well-being Measure (ACHWM)© and a brief triage assessment with a local mental health worker. All participants will be followed for 1 year.
Children with newly identified health concerns will be immediately connected to local services, generating a new opportunity to improve health. The development of the research design and its execution were impacted by several events (e.g., disparate worldviews, loss of access to schools). This manuscript describes lessons learned that are important to guide future community-based research with First Nations people. The optimal research design in an Aboriginal context is one that responds directly to local decision makers’ needs and respectfully integrates Aboriginal ways of knowing with Western scientific principles. Such an approach is critical because it will generate meaningful results that will be rapidly adopted, thus reducing the knowledge-to-action gap.