Bloomberg Nursing Assistant Professor Dr. Amy Wright has been awarded a CIHR Indigenous Gender and Wellness Grant along with Dr. Michelle Butt, School of Nursing, McMaster University, for their study “Optimizing the health of indigenous infants and toddlers: Identification of community strengths, needs and priorities to promote early childhood development through healthy, gender diverse parenting”.
The study aims to bring together the urban Indigenous community in Hamilton, ON for a Community Gathering, where research projects focused on the health of Indigenous parents and their infants and toddlers will be identified and prioritized. The Community Gathering will bring together parents of various identities (i.e., mothers, fathers, adoptive parents, two-spirit parents and other gender-diverse parents), Indigenous leaders, and health providers as well as Elders and Knowledge Holders to discuss the strengths, challenges and gaps related to healthy parenting and the early childhood development of young children in Hamilton.
The researchers’ goals include:
- learning about healthy, gender-diverse parenting models and roles to promote healthy early childhood development and positive parent-child-community relationships;
- strengthening partnerships and building relationships among Indigenous community members, organizations and researchers; and
- informing a research proposal created together with members of the Hamilton Indigenous community to submit to a research grant competition.
Dr. Amy Wright’s research focuses on equitable access to health care and positive health care interactions with a focus on cultural safety and trauma & violence-informed care (TVIC). Her recent work focuses on how Indigenous mothers experience using health care services to meet the health needs of their infants and demonstrates an urgent need for cultural safety and TVIC training for everyone working in health care.
Published May 14, 2020