ABSTRACTS:
Liz Bondi, Professor of Social Geography, Head of Institute, School of GeoSciences, Co-Director of Counselling Studies Programme
School of Health, The University of Edinburgh
Email: Liz.Bondi@ed.ac.uk
Title: Caring for the North: Care Relationships and Counselling in Remote Scottish Communities
This paper explores aspects of the relationships of care involved in the provision and delivery of non-profit counselling services in remote areas in Scotland. The focus is on the perspectives of counsellors and service managers rather than service-users, examining how they think about the relationships involved in the provision and delivery of counselling. The paper draws on interviews conducted with counsellors in two remote areas in Scotland, one consisting of a community scattered across a group of islands, and the other consisting of a mainland coastal community. The analysis explores how research participants conceptualise the meeting of counselling with local cultures. Confidentiality is fundamental to counselling and presents particular challenges in the development of services in remote areas, approaches to which are discussed. Confidentiality in counselling is closely linked to the segmentation of relationships that is typical of urban areas. In remote areas, relationships tend to be less segmented and the analysis explores how counsellors respond to the dilemmas this presents. In conclusion, the paper highlights complex ways of linking together intimacy and distance, connectedness and separation, within specific kinds of caring relationships.
Dawn Hemingway, Chair & Assistant Professor, Social Work Program
University of Northern British Columbia
Email: hemingwa@unbc.ca
Title: The Caring Role of Northern Women
The substantial role of women as paid and unpaid caregivers is relatively well documented. Less research has addressed women’s caring roles in northern, remote environments within a climate of economic uncertainty and shrinking state participation in care provision. In recent years, investigators have undertaken several projects that seek to better understand the caring role of northern women in the context of economic downturn and lack of accessible, appropriate and affordable health and social services.
Highlighted in this presentation are four projects which have examined:
It is hoped that the presentation will facilitate collaboration and teambuilding with other researchers and projects.
Dr. Valorie A. Crooks, Postdoctoral Fellow, York Institute for Health Research
York University
E-mail: crooksva@yorku.ca
Title: The intersection of gender, care, and ‘the north’: considering Ontarians’ lived experiences as a way to inform the agenda
In this presentation I reflect on the intersection of gender, care, and ‘the north’ (GCN) by considering the findings of two related studies conducted in two different Ontario settings. The first setting I consider is Moosonee. This town is relatively small but plays an important role in Northern Ontario as it is home to the most northern stop on the rail system and is located just across the river from Ontario’s most northern hospital. Drawing on findings of 11 interviews conducted with local residents, three of whom were involved in the delivery of health services, while also reflecting on my inability to identify women diagnosed with a particular contested chronic illness while there, I begin to draw out the GCN intersection. I then shift my attention to Sudbury and North Bay – communities where ‘north’ is a state of mind. I use the findings of interviews conducted with 33 chronically ill women in these cities to further explicate the GCN intersection. I think specifically about issues pertaining to northern peoples accessing health care services in northern places and also about pressing issues in delivering quality care, and specifically the establishment of continuity of care, in such settings.
Dr. Martha MacLeod, Associate Professor, Nursing and Community Health Science Programs
University of Northern British Columbia
Email: macleod@unbc.ca
with
Donna Bentham, Research Coordinator, Rural and Northern Practice and its Development
University of Northern British Columbia
Email: benthamd@unbc.ca
Title: Nursing Practice & Practitioners in Rural and Remote Communities: How Does Gender Matter?
The gendered nature of the registered nursing workforce is frequently mentioned, but its implications for recruitment and retention, or for practice in rural and remote communities has seldom been examined. In Northern British Columbia, we have begun to explore the everyday realities in rural and remote nursing practice, and ways in which practice and practitioners may be developed and supported. It is thought that care can be improved when there is a sufficient, well-supported nursing workforce practising in ways that are relevant and responsive to the communities with whom they live and work. Based on recent and ongoing studies, this presentation will highlight some of our gender-related findings about rural and remote nurses and their practice. We will conclude with a discussion of implications for nursing practice and its development, as well as questions for related directions for gender-based research in rural and northern health human resources and nursing practice.
Dr. Denise Cloutier-Fisher, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography and Centre on Aging
University of Victoria
and
Dr. Karen Kobayashi, Dept. of Sociology
University of Victoria
Email: dcfisher@uvic.ca
Title: Making Meaningful Connections: Gender, Health and Service Use Among Socially Isolated Older Adults in Canada
Using data from the 2000-01 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS), this study explores relationships between gender, health and service use among a sample of socially isolated older adults. The Anderson-Newman service utilization framework is used to model how predisposing, enabling and need factors influence service use (i.e., above average annual visits to doctors) and health status (i.e., self-reported health). Socially isolated older adults are defined by physical isolation (i.e., living alone and rural or urban residence) and social isolation (i.e., having few close friends or relatives to rely upon).
Data analyses (both multivariate logistic regression and bivariate analyses) reveal different patterns of health status and service use by gender and residence. Need variables (e.g., number of chronic conditions and needing help with activities of daily living (ADLs)) explain the greatest amount of variation in above average doctor visits and health status. Rural residence increases the likelihood of above average doctor visits for socially isolated older women and for older Canadian adults more generally. Rural residence increases the odds of reporting poorer health for socially isolated older men, but reduces them for socially isolated older women. These findings are discussed relative to challenges in the local service context and levels of vulnerability for rural men and women.
Dr. Jeannie Shoveller, Associate Professor, Department of Health Care & Epidemiology (Faculty of Medicine)
University of British Columbia
Email: jean.shoveller@ubc.ca
Title: Spatial Times: Characterising the Inter-Relationships Amongst Space, Place and Time
Young mothers’ stories of their everyday lives stimulates theoretical questions about the inter-relationships amongst space, place and time and provide insights into their housing, educational, parenting and employment opportunities. Drawing on a study with 25 young mothers (ages 15-25 years) and fieldwork in Prince George, BC, I describe the ways in which environmental features and evocations of place play out in the lives of young mothers and their children. I also show how young mothers’ lives are being transformed (and how their worlds are transforming) through time. I use the data to show how space, place and time interact to create disorder and disruptions in young mothers’ lives. For example, when a young mother ‘ages out’, her abilities to comply with State requirements related to her life and those of her children (e.g., obtaining and maintaining ‘good’ housing; completing her education; finding a job) are severely compromised. When young mothers ‘age out’, current policies dictate that they have become ‘old enough’ to manage on their own, while other aspects of their physical, social and emotional geographies continue to reinforce the inequalities experienced by those who bear their children at ‘too early an age.’ I suggest promising ways forward that may reshape in healthful ways young mothers’ life ‘stories-so-far.’
Dr. Neil Hanlon, Associate Professor, Geography Program
University of Northern BC
Email: hanlon@unbc.ca
Title: Gender, Health and Care in Remote Settings: Considering Place Integration
I will discuss the concept of place integration (Cutchin, 1997) and suggest that it represents a way forward in understanding the interrelationships of gender, health and care in ‘northern’ and remote settings. Rather than undermining or contradicting existing models of health (e.g., life course perspective, social determinants of health), I argue that place integration allows us to move frameworks of health and care forward by paying closer attention to place as an orientation for interpersonal relations and a resource for action.
Jacqueline Baldwin, activist, mother, grandmother, actor, organic farmer, winner of nine awards for her poetry,
Prince George, BC
Email: jakes5@shaw.ca
Title: "Call the Name Gently, Ne-chaaaaa-ko"
I will read an essay and a poem, previously published in A Northern Woman (Harbour, 2003) which together describe the effects of the Kemano Hydro Project on the Cheslatta people of Northern BC. This poem tells through story what damage has been done to the earth and people's health by ignoring the deep wisdom of women who live close to this Northern land, with their unique ways of knowing learned from centuries of ancestors. To accompany this reading, I will display Evelyn Laurell Crocker's (MA First Nations' Studies UNBC) canvas, "the Leaving," which depicts her interpretation of the moment the women of Cheslatta were forced to leave their village. I have also read this poem at a Conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States, at the SFU Centre for Dialog in Vancouver.
Margo Greenwood, Academic Leader, National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health (NCCAH)
Title: An Introduction to the National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health (NCCAH)
A network of six National Collaborating Centres for Public Health, including the National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health (NCCAH) was established in 2005 under the rubric of the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). The network of Collaborating Centres as a whole are charged with the goal of building on existing strengths and creating and fostering linkages among researchers, the public health community, and other stakeholders to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of Canada's public health system.
This presentation is an introduction to the Centre for Aboriginal Health. It will provide a discussion of how a national research institute, located in northern British Columbia, establishes national and multi-sectoral connections between First Nations, Inuit, Métis, and non-Aboriginal representatives across stakeholder delineations such as front line community peoples, government representatives, academic researchers, medical practitioners, and policy advisors. In efforts to ensure the translation of health research into meaningful and community relevant practices, the NCCAH will integrate its activities with the Aboriginal community, researchers, health professionals and government departments at many levels when developing priorities for research, evaluation and knowledge translation. Fundamentally, this presentation is an overview of processes involved in bringing national research agendas into northern, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities to ensure these communities benefit from the full spectrum of health research in Canada today.
Dr. Cindy Jardine, Assistant Professor, Department of Rural Economy
University of Alberta
Email: cindy.jardine@ualberta.ca
Title: Communication and Understanding of Health Risks in Northern Aboriginal Communities
Health risk perception and communication has been the focus of significant academic research in recent years. Previous studies have shown that communication and understanding of risk are strongly associated with culture and different ways of knowing, and that context and situation are critical to understanding how people understand and respond to risk. However, little work has been done specifically on indigenous Aboriginal communities, particularly in the North.
Past efforts to communicate about health risks have had mixed success in these communities, largely because health agencies and others have not understood what types of risks people are worried about and why they’re worried about them. A research study was undertaken to develop better insights into the communication and understanding of various types of health risks in the Yellowknives Dene First Nation communities of Ndilo and Dettah in the Northwest Territories. The research was conducted using a participatory approach that included the communities as full partners. Information was collected using questionnaires administered by trained community fieldworkers and PhotoVoice (a relatively new research method based on visual associations). The results indicated that people have a relatively rationale and informed understanding of the important risks in their lives. However, they continue to struggle with appropriate ways of dealing with these risks in their community.
Sarah de Leeuw and Margo Greenwood, Centre of Excellence for Children and Adolescents with Special Needs, The UNBC Task Force on Substance Abuse, University of Northern BC, 3333 University Way, Prince George, BC, V2N 4Z9
Email: Sarah de Leeuw - 2lsnd@qlink.queensu.ca
Margo Greenwood - greenwom@unbc.ca
Title: Building on Northern Strengths: A Consideration of Geographically Relevant Research Programs and Methodologies
Those of us living and working in northern British Columbia or First Nations communities are well aware of the challenging socio-economic climate of our region. We rarely see ourselves represented in academic research projects or in the popular media and, when we are profiled, it is often to highlight the deficits of our locales and population. There is, however, an alternate story of life in northern British Columbia, a story of resilience, social capital, and community capacity. The basis of this presentation is that alternate story, specifically the research undertakings of the Centre of Excellence for Children and Adolescents with Special Need (COE), the UNBC Task Force on Substance Abuse. With a five year presence in northern British Columbia, the COE UNBC Task Force on Substance Abuse has successfully undertaken and published a number of research papers focused on moving away from a “deficit-based” understanding of health issues in the north. Two research projects that used strengths-based and decolonizing methodologies will serve to illustrate how to vision, undertake, and complete research that is geographically relevant to northern and First Nations communities.