Queen’s Weeneebayko Health Education Program launched with support from the Mastercard Foundation to transform Indigenous healthcare in the region | Faculty of Health Sciences | Queen’s University | Faculty of Health Sciences

The Weeneebayko Region Health and fitness Authority (WAHA), Queen’s College, and the Mastercard Basis are partnering to rework healthcare in Northeastern Ontario and to grow schooling and employment options for Indigenous youth by creating the Queen’s Weeneebayko Health and fitness Education and learning Software. 

WAHA and Queen’s Well being Sciences will co-establish a college curriculum for overall health professions teaching in the western James Bay area. The software will prepare Indigenous learners for professions in medicine, nursing, midwifery, and other overall health professions by culturally-informed schooling. Programming and methods will also be created to permit regional youth to imagine, pursue, and thrive in well being professions training appropriate from significant college.

“This is a quite essential initiative for the Weeneebayko Area that will assist enhance the capability for culturally-protected healthcare that is directed and sent by health experts from our communities,” claims Lynne Innes, President and Chief Government Officer, Weeneebayko Region Health Authority. “It is remarkable to function collectively on this new strategy that will support Indigenous youth as they pursue health care professions and establish a more powerful, much healthier future for the communities we provide.” 

The initiative aims to tackle health care worries dealing with distant, Indigenous communities, which includes very low accessibility to companies and amenities, the need for cultural protection, overall health outcome gaps, and underrepresentation of Indigenous peoples amongst wellness experts.

“This task builds on a prolonged-standing connection among Queen’s, the Weeneebayko Spot Wellbeing Authority, and the communities of the James Bay region,” claims the Honourable Murray Sinclair, Queen’s Chancellor. “It delivers hope for Reconciliation by new techniques to educating and supporting Indigenous youth in pursuing occupations in healthcare. I consider this can aid supply the transformation desired in Indigenous healthcare in Canada.”

The eyesight is to create a new instruction website in Moosonee that will provide coastal local community sites. The schooling systems will help develop complete, sustainable, neighborhood-centred healthcare—improving client results and addressing gaps in supply. Training within Indigenous communities will bolster workforce retention and graduate industry experts capable of giving culturally acceptable care. 

The Mastercard Basis is associated in this partnership via its EleV Plan, which aims to assistance 100,000 Indigenous younger people on their pathways by way of education and onto significant livelihoods by 2030. The Mastercard Basis dedicated extra than $31 million to assistance this partnership.

“The Basis is earning a determination to assistance sustainable, systemic adjust in health care education and learning and shipping and delivery as led by 1st Nations youth, communities and management in the region,” suggests Jennifer Brennan, Director of Canada Plans at the Mastercard Basis. 

“WAHA’s deep partnership with Queen’s University, and their shared working experience and expertise, holds possible for serious transformation in the area and beyond. Our purpose is to get behind progressive strategies that generate meaningful prospects for 1st Nations youth based mostly on their cultures, values, and aspirations.” 

The overall health professions schooling application builds upon a approximately six-10 years partnership among Queen’s and Weeneebayko Location well being facilities anchored in teaching, frontline care, and investigation. Enrollment could get started as early as September 2025, with an greatest enrollment of 240 pupils for every 12 months, throughout the wellbeing professions.

The curricula will be co-developed by WAHA and Queen’s, with advice from community associates. Important facets include things like:

• Decolonized technique: Indigenous ways of being aware of built-in all through. 

• Interprofessional: an interprofessional curriculum built to split down professional silos and put together graduates to supply affected person treatment using team-primarily based approaches.   

• Mentorship: a mentorship into exercise plan will encourage graduate retention within neighborhood communities.  

• Culturally safe care: training will be located within Indigenous communities and will graduate industry experts geared up to deliver the treatment their communities will need.  

• Retention: a scholar recruitment, placement, and mentorship strategy to keep method graduates in Indigenous communities in excess of the extensive time period.  

The partnership will also build a Wellness Profession Pathways Method to offer vocation counselling, sources, mentorship, and application guidance, as nicely as establish obtain to prerequisite programs to guidance programs in well being sciences. As component of the program’s tender start, substantial university college students from WAHA communities took section in a 7 days-lengthy, immersive wellness sciences camp at Queen’s in August 2022.

“This plan will help Indigenous health and fitness transformation – bettering regional overall health outcomes, addressing gaps in care shipping and delivery, and constructing the Indigenous well being workforce,” claims Jane Philpott, Dean, Queen’s Health Sciences. “We appear forward to setting up this dynamic instructional product along with the Weeneebayko Location Well being Authority and neighborhood Indigenous leaders, and we thank the Mastercard Foundation for supporting this very important perform.”