FHS assistant professor wins Michael Smith Scholar Award

By Sharon Mah

Michael Smith Health Research BC has granted FHS Assistant Professor Lyana Patrick its prestigious Scholar Award. Patrick was one of three SFU researchers in the 2024 cohort of Scholar Award winners. 

Patrick's project, Decolonizing Planetary Health: Rebuilding Social, Cultural, and Environmental Relationships for Indigenous Well-being, examines racism against Indigenous people in the British Columbia health care system. Her project proposal reads: 

"Systemic racism against Indigenous peoples is an enduring problem in British Columbia’s health care system. Education and training programs to date have fallen short in producing necessary structural and systemic change, due in part to the lack of consistently mandated training for health care providers in cultural safety and humility. The overarching goal of this program is to support re-emerging nation-to-nation relationships in Canada as a key determinant of Indigenous health, as a pathway to improving Indigenous experiences of care within the BC health system and creating healthy lands and waters on unceded Indigenous territories. My research program examines how Indigenous peoples are asserting self-determination in community health and wellbeing in response to wide-spread anti-Indigenous racism, and how land-based, Indigenous knowledge may transform relationships. I use storytelling and other knowledge creation methodologies to examine the connection between colonization and Indigenous health and wellbeing, and Indigenous communities’ strategies to exercise self-determination in the face of persistent inequities and injustice. These methodologies are guided by Indigenous community partners and OCAP® principles." 

The MSHRBC Scholars Program supports early career health researchers, helping them form their own research teams, train the next generation of scientists and develop world-leding research programs.