Adapting breath/air communications to rural, remote and Indigenous ways of living

Health Research BC is providing match funds for this research project, which is funded by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Connection Grant. 

Breathing is living. In recent years, policies that impact lung health and air quality have led people to change how they go about daily life. Traditionally, these policies are crafted by experts and specialists, with little input from the public. More effective policies could be developed by enhancing public participation and collaboration in the policy process. The overarching goal of our work is to improve the sharing and exchange of information about lung health policies with people living in rural, remote, and Indigenous communities.

This study uses design methods to adapt lung health policy communications for rural, remote, and Indigenous communities. The connections we create will be facilitated by two streams of outreach activities:

Stream 1 — AIRWISE-CONNECT — creates a community advisory group with Indigenous and non-Indigenous community members in northern British Columbia. This group will meet four times over a year to participate in a human-centred design process and interactive group meetings. During these meetings, we will adapt a previously developed website: www.airwisebc.ca.

Stream 2 — AIRWISE-VISION — develops a working relationship with the Witset First Nation Band Council and community members to better inform policies and practice. We will draw on the Design Justice method to create new breath/air policy communications that honour the traditional knowledge and practices in Witset.

The principal investigator, Sonya Cressman, a health economist at Simon Fraser University and the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation, will lead the study with co-Investigators: Brian Fisher and Dawn Hoogeveen at SFU and collaborators: Renelle Myers (BC Cancer), Anthony Noonan (Executive Director, Witset First Nation), Anne- Marie Nicol (SFU), and Chris Carlsten (Legacy for Airway Health).