Indigenous Approaches to Integrated Community-Based Primary Healthcare

Building on our March session on integrated community-based primary health care, this webinar created space to listen, learn and reflect on Indigenous approaches to health, wellbeing and integrated care. Across the session, speakers reminded us that care is not simply a set of services, but a way of being in relationship with people, communities, land, culture and story.

Dr. Lindsay Crowshoe invited us to hold the complexity of inequity, colonisation, culture and systems change, while remaining grounded in strengths-based approaches to wellness. Chelsea Ryan and Veronica Hoffman shared how Southcentral Foundation’s Nuka System of Care is built on relationships, access, integration and shared responsibility with Alaska Native and American Indian customer-owners. Nina Larsson, Kyla Wright and Alisha Matte reflected on the Government of the Northwest Territories’ work to follow a shared “North Star”, centring Indigenous cultures, interconnected care models and learning communities.

Together, the session highlighted that meaningful integrated care begins with humility, reciprocity and the willingness to redesign systems with communities, not for them.