Adding a wholistic approach to disease prevention is the goal of a new research project coming out of the University of Saskatchewan.

Dr. Sarah Oosman, lead researcher on the project, and acting director of USask’s School of Rehabilitation Sciences, says she and her team are working to develop a toolkit for preventing Type 2 diabetes with methods that are meaningful to Indigenous people. She also wants to create measures of medical success that are not grounded in a Western medicine context.

Diabetes is prevalent at a rate of 17.2 per cent among First Nations people living on-reserve, 12.7 per cent among First Nations peoples living off the reserve, 9.9 per cent among Metis peoples, and only 5 per cent among the general population.

Because of that, Oosman says there should be prevention methods that are grounded in an Indigenous world view. Her team has spoken to everyone from youth to Elders, and gathered information on what is meaningful to them when preventing disease. The research is in its early phases, and much more community outreach needs to be done.

Oosman and her team were granted $2 million from the Canadian Institute of Health Research for the project. Communities that have already partnered with the research team include Ile-a-la-Crosse and James Smith Cree Nation.