Tier 2 Canada Research Chair, Social-Ecological Determinants of Health and Wellbeing Public Presentation - Monday, September 16

Dr. Chelsey Geralda Armstrong, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of British Columbia

Public Presentation
"Northern Frontier, Northern Homeland: Social Ecological Dimensions of Health in Canada’s Northern and Rural Regions"

Day: Monday, Septemeber 16, 2019
Time: 1:45 pm
Location: AT5036

Canada’s northern and rural regions are both frontiers of industrial resource extraction and homelands to many thousands of people. Understanding the determinants of health and well-being of the people who call the north home requires an approach that recognizes and embodies the interconnectedness of social and ecological spheres. To date, health impact assessments, biomonitoring studies, and other assessments of industry impacts have failed to adequately address social-ecological dimensions of health. As a result, ecotoxicity, environmental racism, and the effects of climate change disproportionately affect northern Indigenous and rural settler communities. An ethnobiological approach that brings community based methodologies, critical theory, and participatory action research to the fore is a means of overcoming inequities in Canadian public health. In this presentation I explore examples from large-scale liquefied natural gas (LNG) developments in western Canada, Indigenous social justice and biocultural conservation movements, and the effects of climate change on food access and food sovereignty of land-based communities. Together, these examples highlight some of the most pressing public health concerns for northern and rural communities, and attempt to more fully answer the question, what are the socio-ecological dimensions of health?