Good morning. My name is Onalee Randell, and I'm the director of the department of health and environment at ITK, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. ITK is the national voice that represents the approximately 55,000 Inuit who live in four regions of Canada, in 53 communities.
We often hear about the concerns specific to Inuit, and we are pleased to be able to present on the 10-year plan and our assessment of it.
I want to first talk about areas where we've seen some specific improvements in the last five years. I think the plan has been instrumental in that. One of the areas is the recognition that jurisdictions, including the two territories and two provinces where Inuit reside, as well as the federal government, have committed and recognize the need to work together to address jurisdictional issues.
We need to continue to work together to ensure that Inuit, like all other Canadians, have access to the care they need when they need it. But we also need to make sure that these solutions are made in the north, with community involvement.
Inuit are much less likely to access health care than other Canadians. In 2001, 46% of Inuit children had access to a physician. The Canadian average is 86%. Many of the physician services and medical services are provided by fly-in doctors and fly-in dentists, and the only cases that are seen are emergency cases. If the doctor doesn't happen to be in the community, then individuals are sent out to receive medical care.
The priority area that I want to focus on today is health human resources, because this has been identified as an area where we can make the biggest impact in the shortest time. In developing a relevant health human resource solution for Inuit, we believe that people have to start thinking outside of the health care box and look at the social determinants.
I'm going to spend a few minutes talking about some of the recommendations we would make for an effective health human resource strategy.
First of all, cultural and linguistic competency is a priority area. That means that people providing health care in Inuit regions must be able to provide it in the language of choice, with familiarity of Inuit culture and values. Inuit and western health knowledge and values must be combined. We've seen success in these types of models in communities, such as the Nunavut midwifery programs, which allow Inuit in Nunavut to stay in their home regions to have their babies.
With respect to infrastructure, there's a tremendous gap in infrastructure in Inuit communities. In some cases, the reason that health care providers and professionals cannot be hired is because there are no houses or office space for them to work.
On community health care workers, the paradigm we are recommending in Inuit communities is to focus not only on health care professionals like doctors and nurses and physiotherapists, but on community wellness workers, at a community level, who can be trained in programs based in their communities.
We think there's a need for an urgent review of education systems, beginning with early childhood. The Nunavut Project report, by Thomas Berger, reported that 76% of Nunavut youth drop out of high school and do not graduate. There are limited education opportunities in Inuit communities. One of our priority areas would be to make sure we bring these education opportunities closer to home so that individuals do not have to go thousands of miles away from their home supports.
When we talk about student support and education opportunities, as Paulette was mentioning, the demographics of the Inuit population are significantly different from mainstream Canadians. We've identified that student support, helping students be successful, not only in high school but also in continuing education, is important.
To summarize our recommendations, we believe that in order for any health care reform to be successful, we must ensure that there is community involvement in community health and that the community that uses the health services should be involved in the design, delivery, and maintenance of the system, not simply as the recipient of the end product.
As well, we have to be willing to look at alternative models of health care delivery in developing the solutions. We've spent a significant amount of time researching models in other countries, such as Alaska, that have had great success in addressing remote and rural health care delivery. We need partnerships to be formalized and recognized if we are going to continue to move forward to the benefit of Inuit in Canada.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak to you today.