Janet noticed that assessments for pediatric growth were not specific to the Inuit population

Transcript

I’m here talking with you about how I got involved in doing collaborative research. And this actually started many, many years ago when I was working as an Occupational Therapist in the area of Developmental Paediatrics, and I was working with Inuit children and their family, caregivers – their parents and other caregivers and doing developmental assessments. So I would go out to these rural and remote communities and administer assessments that have been developed far from these communities, not with children who came from these environments.

So the assessments were evidence-based in that they weren’t appropriate for use in Inuit communities but also these assessments weren’t really fair to the children and their families. And so it made me aware of how our healthcare system can fail people who are using it in some instances, and also the need for research evidence. As a healthcare provider I was always looking for research evidence that I could use with clients and that I could see was relevant to my clients but struggling with that.

Yeah, so many years later I went back to school and studied Population Health and got a PhD and all of my research is community partnered – there is always a client, caregiver partner who works on the research and provides governance and leadership in the research because it’s really important that we’re building evidence that the people that are meant to benefit from the research can use and see themselves in. And so that’s why I’m here talking with you today, because that’s what I do.

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