Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2008
First Nations Health Development Project: Tools for Program Planning and Evaluation
This article highlights recent research that will help First Nations and Aboriginal communities in northern Saskatchewan plan, track and evaluate their community-based health and human service programs. Isolated Far North: Implications for Program Planning and Evaluation.” In Phase 2, we will study the healthy community framework in detail and look at the implementation of the Toolkit in each of the communities. The project will focus on two questions: • “How healthy is our community?” • “Why would we want to measure that?” To answer these questions, we will focus on food security, identity and culture, and services and infrastructure/housing. As with Phase 1, the approach in this project is collaborative and grounded in community-identified priorities. Question 1: How Healthy Is Our Community? To help answer this question, we will expand our first pilot study to include more northern communities. We will be compiling indicator information in community-specific databases. We will also carry out quantitative analysis of these data to produce health profiles for each of the five communities in the areas of food security, identity and culture, and housing. Question 2: Why Would We Want to Measure That? We will take an ethnographic approach, visually and orally exploring a year in the life of community participants, including a variety of social and familial arrangements in the three domain areas. From this intimate exploration of community-level realities, we will highlight significant issues, which will help to further develop quantitative and qualitative indicators relevant to the communities.
PHASE 1 OF THE RESEARCH
SPHERU and its partners (the Athabasca Health Authority, the Prince Albert Grand Council (PAGC), and the Northern InterTribal Health Authority (NITHA)) recently completed the first phase of this research project. This research focused on developing a community health framework and identifying potential indicators. Phase 1 addressed two questions: • “What is a healthy community?” • “How would we measure that?” These questions are part of the process of developing a healthy community index for Aboriginal communities. Our approach was community based and participatory. We used community interviews and focus groups to ask community members and program managers about what makes a community healthy and how they could tell whether their community was healthy. Phase 1 also: • Reviewed resources from the health and social service programs in each of the participating communities. • Identified community health indicators already being tracked in the communities. Phase 1 produced three major deliverables: • Logic Models. These Models describe the health and other social programs offered in all nine participating communities. • Pilot Study. We launched a small pilot study in one northern Saskatchewan community to find out if there was information available on the indicators. • Community Health Indicators Toolkit. The Toolkit includes 165 indicators that community members and health providers identified as important. We placed the indicators within a framework made up of larger areas (domains) and indicator categories. You can see these domains and categories on the SPHERU website at http://www.uregina.ca/fnh/guide.pdf (p. 2). The entire Toolkit can be downloaded from SPHERU’s website at http://www.spheru.ca/spheru-launches-firstnations-health-development-site. We also identified regional and national data for some of the indicators. If no data existed, we suggested survey questions that could be used for local level data collection.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR YOU
This work will lead to the development of information systems that community health directors can use to assess the effectiveness of their community health programs. This research will help community and health authority representatives identify: • Program challenges and gaps. • How their programs are positively affecting the health and well-being of their communities. This information will also be useful to the public, program administrators and planners, and policy-makers and funders. Sylvia Abonyi (SPHERU and Department of Community Health and Epidemiology, University of Saskatchewan), Bonnie Jeffery (SPHERU and Faculty of Social Work, University of Regina) and Colleen Hamilton (SPHERU). This research was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation and Northern Medical Services.
PHASE 2 OF THE RESEARCH
We recently received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for a second phase of this research. In this phase, we are partnering with the Athabasca Health Authority and its five communities (three provincial and two First Nations) on a project called “Tools 2 — Community Health and Wellness Indicators Reflecting Daily Life in Saskatchewan’s
Alberta Centre for Active Living 11759 Groat Road, Edmonton AB T5M 3K6 Tel.: 780-427-6949/Fax: 780-455-2092 1-800-661-4551 (toll-free in Alberta) E-mail: active.living@ualberta.ca Web site: www.centre4activeliving.ca
SPHERU (Saskatchewan Population Health & Evaluation Research Unit) University of Saskatchewan and University of Regina Saskatoon SK S7N 5E5 Tel.: 306-966-2250/Fax: 306-966-7920 Website: www.spheru.ca
The Alberta Centre for Active Living is the Canadian Health Network Active Living Affiliate.