POLS1150 Research Paper Part 3

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1150

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Political Science

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Oct 30, 2023

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POLS1150 - Prof. Mohan Maggie Reddon - 1192899 The Effects of Canadian Political Culture on Indigenous Healthcare Access The article I have chosen to expand on is the first listed in my bibliography; Barriers and mitigating strategies to healthcare access in indigenous communities of Canada: A narrative review. I chose to focus on this article rather than the other two because of how in-depth it is in answering my question. One of the other articles (article 2) titled Oil pipelines and food sovereignty: Threat to health equity for indigenous communities, while informative and helpful to understanding why Indigenous people in Canada tend to have poorer health, does not touch on access to healthcare. It is also a fairly science heavy paper, and while still pertinent to know the background on the issue, I am more interested in working on understanding the systems after the fact. The other source I had (article 3) Broken Trust drives native health disparities, I felt there was not enough information to go through and focused too heavily on a subject (specifically that of natural medicine and Western ideology) that is not the main concern of my inquiry. This is not to say these sources aren’t valuable, but I realized that my chosen source covers these issues while also answering my research question distinctively. For example, my second source listed details the reasons why there is such a disparity between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous health status, and the third source covers disparities in health access; such as eurocentrism and stigma in healthcare. The source I am focusing on now not only touches on both those ideas, but also introduces action and mitigation, and that is what the goal of my research question was to find. I believe political culture in Canada (at least recently) has been centered around change, so finding an article that not only presents the issues but attempts to indicate what has been done to solve

them, and potentially even suggests ideas to solve them was important to me. The goal of this article is to address healthcare disparities/barriers to access within Canadian communities, and identifying past and potential action that could lessen that gap. They created three categories for types of barriers, which were proximal, intermediate, and distal. One proximal barrier listed was geography, the issue being the isolation of Indigenous health centres and their low staffing. Intermediate barriers included employment and income issues, which make it difficult for Indigenous people to pay for things not covered under OHIP like prescriptions. Distal barriers are the most complex, for example colonialism, which includes the seclusion of Indigenous people from the creation of Canada, the denial of their traditional medicines, and cause generational issues like violence and addiction. The article lists mitigation strategies that were enacted by the government to solve each problem, such as building new hospitals, providing students with scholarships/loan programs, respecting traditional medicine, and hiring more Indigenous healthcare workers. The article's conclusion was that although a lot of work has been done, the work is “ad hoc” and needs to be more reformative. More needs to be done on every level of analysis, not only superficially, because the proximal issues (like too little hospitals) truly stem from distal issues like racism. Seeing as this article is truly a review paper, there are lots of sources used by the authors to provide evidence for their argument. One that seemed to heavily inform this article is titled Discrimination against Indigenous Peoples through the Eyes of Health Care Professionals, and is cited below. It details a specific barrier, that of discrimination in healthcare, that has a detrimental effect on Indigenous people’s health. According to the article, “unwelcoming environment, stereotyping and stigma, and practice informed by racism” were all identified as causes for poor Indigenous healthcare standards. The difference between these two sources is

that my source is a secondary review on already reported research, while their evidence is obviously primary research. This evidence came from a study in which interviews were conducted with various healthcare workers (in different sectors e.g, maternity, cancer, mental health) as well as focus groups. I think this source is a helpful one because not only does it provide credible and specific evidence for discrimination in healthcare, it also explains why it impacts Indigenous communities beyond healthcare systems, and provides strategies to amend this problem. I think the main article I have chosen to focus on was influenced greatly, especially in terms of their recommendations for mitigation, by this source. One term I identified in the article was “equity oriented healthcare.” Of course, I could infer what this term means, but specific to this article this term holds a lot of meaning. Mitigation strategies provided often require extra money on top of an already expensive healthcare system, and what some may think is “special treatment” for implementing more training and sensitivity towards Indigenous people. Looking back to the data and findings on the issues and inequalities in the system, the specificity of this term serves as a reminder that equity often requires extra help towards certain communities that have historically been disadvantaged. Equity oriented healthcare means putting Indigenous health above others until we reach a point where they are equal in healthcare to the rest. Another important term was “negative bias.” The article explains negative bias through the example of Indigenous stereotypes created by the media and how this prejudice affects their care by professionals. Negative bias is to me, the obstructive action that results from bias/prejudice when often there is no basis for it. The example in the article was the stereotype that all Indigenous people are addicts, and in turn caused doctors to believe that when they come in complaining of pain they are just looking for medications. In turn, doctors do not take Indigenous patients seriously and ultimately compromise their health. Considering this

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phenomenon which is also called “the negativity effect” is huge in repairing discrepancies in healthcare, because it is clear that inadequate healthcare is largely based in racist and bigoted notions. Citation: Wylie, Lloy, and Stephanie McConkey. “Insiders’ Insight: Discrimination against Indigenous Peoples through the Eyes of Health Care Professionals.” Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities , vol. 6, no. 1, 2018, pp. 37–45., https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-018-0495-9.