A group of Dalhousie researchers are sharing their own personal stories as part of a new project highlighting the importance of culturally responsive health care.
Dr. Nancy Ross and Dr. Terrence Lewis in the Faculty of Health’s School of Social Work are guiding the project with consultation and leadership from Canadian Senator Wanda Thomas Bernard, professor emeritus in the school and expert in Africentric research.
The project sees community storytellers, research coordinators, graduate students and faculty members coming together as a team to answer the question: "How do we move forward as a society within health and social systems to unsettle racism, silence and violence?"
"This has provided our team with a different worldview; one that is more relational and focused on the wellbeing of the collective," says Dr. Ross, the principal investigator on the project, which is grounded in participatory action research (PAR) rooted in Africentric principles.
Bringing experience into research
The project, titled Moving Forward Together: Unsettling Racism, Silence and Violence in Health and Social Services, is funded by SSHRC and CIHR and builds on prior grants and collaborations — including Culturally Responsive Healthcare to Reduce Gender-based Violence, which produced two short films.
Those films — found here and here — address the barriers faced by African Nova Scotians when accessing health care and resources related to gender-based violence. They show the importance of applying an Africentric lens to health and social services.
Central to the current project is the invitation to have each team member incorporate their own story into the research. Each member created a three- to seven-minute video reflecting an aspect of their life connected to culturally responsive care.
For Dr. Ross, that meant reflecting on the Four A’s of Allyship: Awareness, Analysis, Action and Accountability and recommitting to open conversations about racism in her own classrooms.
We don't want it to just be a checked box. We want you to feel how we feel.
For research coordinator Shirley Hodder, the process has turned into a healing journey. Hodder's video shares her experience growing up as a caregiver for her deaf parents, one of whom is African Nova Scotian.
"I'm really making my inner child validated and seen," she says.
Master of Social Work student and storyteller Holly Johnson describes the goal simply: "We don't want it to just be a checked box. We want you to feel how we feel."
From stories to practice
The team's videos are already being put into practice. During last fall and winter semesters, a pilot of four two-hour interactive Interprofessional Health Education (IPHE) modules were built around the films with development led by Afolake Awoyiga, a PhD student in Health. They were also featured as part of four national conference presentations at the Canadian Association of Social Work Education Conference in Ottawa in June.
They are a professional-development resource for health-care students and practitioners created in consultation with Dalhousie's Centre for Learning and Teaching and the Faculty of Open Learning and Career Development.
For this multigenerational team that includes Black Canadians, African Nova Scotians and allies, the work is as much about relationships as it is about research. As Hodder puts it, "We're not listened to, we're told what's wrong with us. These systems need to be held accountable."