Thank you.
My name is Michael Dumont. I am Anishinabe Marten Clan. My family is from the Shawanaga First Nation, and I also carry mixed European ancestry. I am calling from the unceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, where I am honoured to make my home. I am a family physician and represent the Lu'ma Medical Centre, where I serve as medical director.
I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to speak today about urban indigenous primary care in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Indigenous peoples in Canada experience unacceptable disparities in health outcomes, and there continues to be a large unmet need for culturally safe medical care to address this gap. With this goal in mind and guided by TRC call to action 22, in 2016 we established Lu'ma Medical Centre, an indigenous-operated not-for-profit society. Our centre delivers safe, culturally integrated primary care to 1,900 indigenous people in urban Vancouver through a team-based, two-eyes-seeing model, blending western and traditional indigenous approaches to health and healing.
We have been fortunate to build excellent partnerships with the First Nations Health Authority, Vancouver Coastal Health and our provincial health ministry in developing our community-guided service plan, which funds our multidisciplinary team. The support from our local MP, Don Davies, and our provincial MLA and health minister, Adrian Dix, has been invaluable.
However—