Saturday 9 September 2023

Developing a Comprehensive Health and Well-being Survey

By Bunmi Afolabi and Amber Balan

Hello!

I'm Bunmi Afolabi, and I’m Amber Balan. We are 2nd year MDP students. We completed our second field placement with the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation (SVDN) Health Centre, which involved developing and designing a comprehensive Health and Well-being Survey questionnaire that captures relevant information about the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation community members.

Our placement community is Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, the largest Dakota Nation in Canada and the only self-governing First Nation with recognized jurisdiction by Canada and Manitoba. On July 1st, 2014, SVDN was no longer a signatory to the Treaty [1]. This means the Indian Act ceased to apply to Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, Sioux Valley Dakota Nation Lands and persons found on those lands.

We collaborated with the Health Centre staff team to design a survey questionnaire that includes questions relating to housing, nutrition, cultural safety, healthcare access, mental health, etc. This survey hopes to capture community-level information about the characteristics of the various demographics in SVDN and how the social determinants of health impact the quality of their lives and well-being.  To inform the design of the survey questionnaire, we conducted literature review to identify surveys carried out by other First Nations, Inuit, or Métis communities and Indigenous organizations. This has resulted in producing a draft survey with over 30 subsections. Each question has been reviewed and refined to ensure the language is simple, clear, concise, accurate, culturally appropriate, and relevant. 

This project is vital because the data obtained from the survey can be used to identify strengths and gaps while demonstrating the importance of developing and implementing programs and services that support every aspect of a community member's health and well-being. This will also support the community towards their goal of collecting, storing, and being stewards of their own data.


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