The Importance of Partnerships

By Tara Myran, 2nd year MDP student

Anniin,

My name is Tara Faye Myran and I currently live on my ancestral homelands, Treaty 1 Territory located along the Red River. I am from Long Plain First Nation and Swan Lake First Nation both located in Southern Manitoba, and I am of Ojibway and Dakota descent from both my parents.

This year, I chose to complete my second field placement at the National Collaborating Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCCID). This pan-Canadian knowledge translation organization is located at University of Manitoba’s Bannatyne campus within the Health Science Centre. I was provided the opportunity to work hybrid which worked great! At NCCID I worked under the direction of Dr. Claudyne Chevrier who mentored and guided me for each of the projects I was working on.

My role at this field placement was to work with my supervisor on two innovative projects that are geared towards partnership and knowledge translation.

The first project is called Joint Action for Equity – Stories of primary care and public health partnership and the second is the Tuberculosis Patient Journey for Northern First Nations Communities.

 The Joint Action for Equity project documents partnerships between public health and primary care, especially as they relate to health equity. My involvement in the Joint Action for Equity project focused on exploring a particular story of the Manitoba First Nations Covid-19 Vaccine Roll-out.  

The second project I was involved with was the Tuberculosis Patient Journey for Northern First Nations Communities and I found it to be an innovative and unique tool for public health and health care practitioners. The online tool is a depiction of the stages of tuberculosis infection, but more importantly, the many Indigenous and social factors that influence a person’s journey with TB. The project is a collaboration with many First Nations experts in Canada.  I worked on revising the scripts for introductory videos to highlight more positive aspects of data and capture the strengths of utilizing these types of webtools to address issues such as tuberculosis. I also revised some of the sections of the platform, including education, quality of life and health which I found to be beneficial for me as a future MDP Practitioner.

I am grateful for the opportunity of conducting my field placement at NCCID. I walked away with many skills such as time management, learning to analyze how knowledge translation is transmitted to public health and health care practitioners and literature reviews. Understanding the importance of how knowledge translation is used in different platforms such as video scripts and mapping is something that I look forward to utilizing in the future.

This field placement course was my last course to be completed upon graduation set for this October 2022.

“Having the opportunity to work at NCCID allowed me to learn, grow and apply what I have been taught during my last two years of the MDP program. I encourage my fellow colleagues to look at NCCID as a future field placement.”

Reflections on youth and community research

 By Sage Broomfield, 1st year MDP student

My name is Sage Broomfield, I am neyihaw from Treaty 8, English and Irish. My work in the MDP has focused on critical and community focused energy and environmental development. This summer I worked with CASES in partnership with The Gwich’in Tribal Council (GTC), in Inuvik, N.T in Treaty 11 Territory. My job was to support the implementation of a community and youth-based research model in the Gwich’in communities of Aklavik, Inuvik, Tsiigehtchic, and Teetl’it Zheh (Fort McPherson). 

The solar array of the Children First Society, childcare facility

Since my last blog post two youth have been hired two youth and I continue to support their interview and training processes from back in Winnipeg. And I have had a chance to reflect on my experience and the lessons I learned. Some challenges that I want to explore in the future are running youth programming for a short period of time during summer months and garnering youth interested in close but separate communities. I will do this through my continued work and research this year.

Even being in the community for a short period of time, two months, I was hearing what was interesting, important, or being built-upon in terms of energy security and sovereignty in the region. A personal highlight of my experience was chatting with the community members and youth who were interested in their energy futures.

During my field placement, I learned that good community research takes time, adaptability, and good relationships. I learned a lot about and able to reflect now on how to make this model or others like it more successful in future – which I look forward to doing.

Being in Inuvik put into practice my classroom learning and carrying out this project was and will continue to be an impactful experience. The months I was there were filled with daily lessons, new experiences, and good conversations. I am grateful to the Gwich’in Tribal Council and the CASES project for this opportunity and to the people of Treaty 11 who I had the pleasure of connecting with. 

A 10:30pm late summer sunset driving back from Tuktoyaktuk after falling asleep to full sunlight for the length of my stay - hiy hiy to the land of the midnight sun for this experience!