NCCIH Research Associate Dr. Viviane Josewski awarded Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health Fellowship
June 2022
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health (IIPH) has awarded Dr. Viviane Josewski a three-year research Fellowship. Dr. Josewski’s work will focus on “co-creating a collective vision for mental wellness and resilience with urban Indigenous communities.”
Dr. Josewski is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and a Research Associate with the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health (NCCIH) at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC).
This research will involve working with Friendship/Métis Centres (FC/MCs) in British Columbia to develop a vision for community mental wellness grounded in Indigenous peoples' experiences. Indigenous peoples in Canada face significant mental health inequities. Urban Indigenous perspectives in health programming remain lacking. As a result, mainstream health services are often ineffective, culturally unsafe, and underused by Indigenous peoples. In contrast, Indigenous-led health services grounded in local Indigenous knowledge(s) improve access to care and wholistic health outcomes for Indigenous peoples.
This study builds upon a larger Indigenous-led research partnership between the FC/MCs, Interior Health and the University of British Columbia Okanagan (UBCO). Over the past year, this partnership has worked to co-develop, implement, and evaluate culturally safe tele-diabetes clinics.
In this process, the FC/MCs identified urgent needs to address mental wellness. This new research will engage FC/MCs, as co-researchers to:
- 1) explore community mental wellness needs and priorities,
- 2) co-develop recommendations for mapping community-based pathways to mental wellness and resilience, and
- 3) engage new community and health system partners in Northern BC.
Consistent with Indigenous Methodologies and Two-Eyed Seeing, information gathering and sharing will be facilitated by local Elders, Community Research Liaisons, and Advisory Teams. Methods include environmental scans, Talking Circles, and Community Gatherings. The goal is to co-create a collective vision to guide development of culturally safe wholistic programs aimed at improving mental health and diabetes outcomes, and resilience in urban Indigenous communities. Results will be community-owned and add to knowledge bettering Indigenous health outcomes.
Dr. Josewski’s program of research is located at the interface of health equity, Indigenous health, and health policy and services, with a particular focus on mental health care in urban Indigenous communities. A white settler, she began her career as a nurse in Germany, where she was born and raised. Dr. Josewski completed a BA in psychology in the United States, and, both a MSc (2009) in Population and Public Health and a PhD (2020) in Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. A member of an interdisciplinary group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers at UBC Okanagan, she currently works with five BC Interior urban Indigenous communities, local health care providers, and the Interior Health Authority on co-developing culturally safe tele-diabetes and obesity clinics.