Community-based Participatory Process - Climate Change and Health Adaptation Program for Northern First Nations and Inuit in Canada

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International Journal of Circumpolar Health
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Community-based Participatory Process – Climate
Change and Health Adaptation Program for
Northern First Nations and Inuit in Canada
Diane McClymont Peace & Erin Myers
To cite this article: Diane McClymont Peace & Erin Myers (2012) Community-based Participatory
Process – Climate Change and Health Adaptation Program for Northern First Nations and Inuit in
Canada, International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 71:1, 18412, DOI: 10.3402/ijch.v71i0.18412
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.3402/ijch.v71i0.18412
© 2012 Diane McClymont Peace and Erin
Myers
Published online: 08 May 2012.
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Community-based Participatory Process 
Climate Change and Health Adaptation
Program for Northern First Nations and
Inuit in Canada
Diane McClymont Peace* and Erin Myers
Environmental Health Research Division, First Nations and Inuit Health Branch, Health Canada, Ottawa,
ON, Canada
Objectives: Health Canada’s Program for Climate Change and Health Adaptation in Northern First Nation
and Inuit Communities is unique among Canadian federal programs in that it enables community-based
participatory research by northern communities.
Study design: The program was designed to build capacity by funding communities to conduct their own
research in cooperation with Aboriginal associations, academics, and governments; that way, communities
could develop health-related adaptation plans and communication materials that would help in adaptation
decision-making at the community, regional, national and circumpolar levels with respect to human health
and a changing environment.
Methods: Community visits and workshops were held to familiarize northerners with the impacts of climate
change on their health, as well as methods to develop research proposals and budgets to meet program
requirements.
Results: Since the launch of the Climate Change and Health Adaptation Program in 2008, Health
Canada has funded 36 community projects across Canada’s North that focus on relevant health issues caused
by climate change. In addition, the program supported capacity-building workshops for northerners,
as well as a Pan-Arctic Results Workshop to bring communities together to showcase the results of their
research. Results include: numerous films and photo-voice products that engage youth and elders and are
available on the web; community-based ice monitoring, surveillance and communication networks; and
information products on land, water and ice safety, drinking water, food security and safety, and traditional
medicine.
Conclusions: Through these efforts, communities have increased their knowledge and understanding of the
health effects related to climate change and have begun to develop local adaptation strategies.
Keywords: community-based participatory research; climate change; health
Received: 30 April 2011; Revised: 10 January 2012; Accepted: 17 January 2012; Published: 8 May 2012
O ver the last decade, climate change researchers
as well as communities have begun to better
understand the impacts that climate change is
having on human health in Canada. Climate is rapidly
changing and this is particularly evident in Canada’s
North. Melting sea and lake ice, melting glaciers, thawing
permafrost, greater storm surges, increasing erosion and
landslides, more unpredictable weather, more freezing
rain in winter, shorter winter conditions, more forest
fires, and hotter summers are some of the events being
observed across Canada’s North. Northerners have
reported that these environmental changes are affecting
their livelihoods, their relationship with the land, their
culture, and their well-being (13). The ability to travel
on land and ice in order to find and hunt traditional
foods, to access potable water and maintain healthy
homes and communities is becoming more difficult.
Climate change is a human health issue as well as
an environmental one. The health implications resulting
from a warmer and more unpredictable climate are not
distributed evenly: current health status, age, genetics,
gender, geography, and economics, are all key variables
æORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Int J Circumpolar Health 2012. # 2012 Diane McClymont Peace and Erin Myers. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), permitting all non-commercial use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Citation: Int J Circumpolar Health 2012, 71: 18412 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/ijch.v71i0.18412
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affecting the ability of individuals and communities
to adapt and reduce the effects of climate change. The
expected outcomes of a warmer planet are numerous
and will have direct and indirect health implications
particularly for northern communities.
To help address these issues, it is important to involve
those communities that are being directly affected by
climate change in monitoring, discussing, advocating and
participating in the process of climate change adaptation.
Health Canada, as a part of the Canadian Government’s
overall climate change strategy, has developed a Climate
Change and Health Adaptation Program for Northern
First Nation and Inuit Communities. The intention of
this program is to fund community-based participatory
research, where the research is led and carried out by
community members who develop culturally appropriate
and locally-based adaptation strategies to reduce the
effects of climate change on their health. The work is
carried out by communities who determine their own
research priorities with the assistance of Aboriginal
associations, academics, governments and agencies where
needed. For this program the participatory research
must include: a study of the impacts of climate change
on health incorporating both traditional knowledge
and science; locally-appropriate adaptation plans and
tools; and communication of the results to the commu-
nity firstly, and then regionally and more broadly as
appropriate. The planned outcome is to develop relevant
information and tools/materials to help in decision-
making at the community, regional, national and inter-
national levels with respect to human health and a
changing environment. This type of research is an
important instrument for community action as well as
evidence-based policy development.
Community-based participatory research by Indigen-
ous peoples is defined by the World Health Organization
(WHO) (4) as: ‘‘a research process that endeavours to
balance interests, benefits and responsibilities between
Indigenous peoples and the research institutions con-
cerned, through a commitment to equitable research
partnership’’. The term implies that the entire process,
from planning to reporting, will be transparent and
accessible to all parties involved. This process has also
been referred to as collaborative research.
Aboriginal people in Canada are assuming a greater
role in determining the kind of research that is done
in their communities and participating in this research.
Although Aboriginal people in Canada, specifically
First Nations and Inuit, share some common cultural
traits and values, they have many distinctive beliefs, laws,
customs and traditions (5), and there is a wide range
of differences in the capacity of First Nations and
Inuit communities and organizations to understand and
participate in research. However, it is important to
note that ‘‘Indigenous theoretical frameworks, methods,
and applications are necessarily wide-ranging, reflecting
diversity, context, and traditions of Indigenous peoples
in Canada. The fundamental commonality in Indigenous
research approaches and methods is the need to reflect
Indigenous relationships to the environment, the land
and the ancestors’’ (6).
The Environmental Health Research Division of
Health Canada, who is administering the Climate Change
Program, has 3 strategic goals with respect to buildi-
ng Aboriginal community-based participatory research
capacity. The first is to ensure inclusion and recognition
of Aboriginal values and traditional knowledge. The
second is to enhance capacity, facilitate and evaluate
translation of Aboriginal environmental health knowl-
edge into policy and practice, and the third is to
encourage/support strategic and Aboriginal-driven devel-
opment planning (7).
A one size fits all model does not work for community-
based participatory research considering that many
communities have varying capacities and face different
challenges and circumstances. Some communities bene-
fit from outside expertise to assist in developing prio-
rities, methodology and implementation, while others
do not need this assistance. What is important for
community-based participatory research is that Aborigi-
nal knowledge is used in partnership with science-
based knowledge. The combination is often much more
powerful than either when used by itself. It is not easy,
however, to integrate both types of knowledge and
more work is required in this field (8,9).
This partnership of knowledge can be illustrated in
one of the projects: ‘‘Traditional Knowledge: A Blueprint
for Change’’ (10). The overall goal of the project was
to train Inuit residents of North West River, Labrador
to collect and map ecological knowledge of Inuit in the
community and record their observations of on-going
landscape transformations. Using this traditional knowl-
edge of the land and its changes, the research team
created a GIS database to store and input the infor-
mation so that the community can use and update the
information over time. The community has a robust
baseline  including current and past characteristics 
against which they can measure changing characteristics
and future conditions. This project used western frame-
work to store and house vital community traditional
knowledge.
Community-based participatory research requires sup-
port not only from individual community members and
researchers but also from community leadership and
Aboriginal organizations. Strong partnerships with these
participants can ensure that the research objectives are
relevant, methodology is appropriate, communications
are effective and that the research project is successful
for all parties involved.
Diane McClymont Peace and Erin Myers
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Citation: Int J Circumpolar Health 2012, 71: 18412 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/ijch.v71i0.18412