Indigenous Alberta Healthy Communities Approach

Welcome to the Indigenous Alberta Healthy Communities Approach

The Indigenous Alberta Healthy Communities Approach is a process that focuses on supporting action and sustainable community wellness. The approach was collaboratively developed to assist First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities with preparing and developing community cancer prevention and screening action plans.

Below is an overview of the process. Think of each step as a checkpoint on your pathway to a healthier community.

Checkpoint 1: Create Community Connections

Ready to begin your journey? To start, you will need to bring along some key people who will make the trip fun, interesting and help you to reach the goal of creating a healthier community.

Build your team by identifying enthusiastic and passionate community members with diverse experience and perspectives or join an existing group or committee. Having champions to advocate for your work is a vital foundation.

Checkpoint 2: Knowledge Gathering and Community Assessments

To develop a baseline knowledge and understanding of the strengths of the community, gather knowledge, information about cancer, and beliefs and health status in the community. This profile will inform your capacity and assess the readiness of the people as they prepare for healthy change.

Checkpoint 3: Prioritize Action Areas

It’s time to set priorities for action. Consider what is most important to your community. Although all ideas may be interesting and important, they also might be unrealistic or unchangeable at this time. It's important to decide what is the best use of your time, effort and resources.

Checkpoint 4A: Create a Community Action Plan

Focus your team’s efforts and communicate with your community partners to create an action plan that provides measurable objectives and activities for evaluation planning, as well as the documentation of successes and challenges.

Checkpoint 4B: Create an Evaluation Plan

When developing your community action plan, it's also necessary to develop an evaluation plan. Create evaluation activities that are clear, supported by measurable objectives, data collection methods and analysis processes. This will help ensure transparency and accountability in your project and inform future program planning and design. Consider this: what do you want to know about your successes, milestones and challenges?

Checkpoint 5: Implement Action Plan and Evaluate

It's time to put your plan into action! While it's important to acknowledge your setbacks and to brainstorm solutions, it's also equally important to identify and measure the quick wins and major milestones with your team. Evaluation of your project doesn't occur at the end, but all throughout your progress. This will help you maintain momentum and produce clear and useful documentation of your work.

Checkpoint 6: Sustain Action and Collaborative Relationships

Maintain your momentum. You don't want to run out of energy before you reach your destination. By designing your work to maintain progress in the long-term, your team can produce more impactful results. The pathway towards health and wellness often requires continuous learning and the ability to adapt.

Checkpoint 7: Share Success

You have invested passion, time and resources to achieve your objectives and now is the time to share your success. Sharing your story on the Healthier Together website allows other communities to build upon what you have learned and to continue to innovate. Remember, you have just increased awareness of cancer prevention and screening. Take the time to recognize the people and organizations that were dedicated to making your community a healthier place to live. Your community is strong, so go spread the word and inspire others.

Success: Indigenous Wellness - A Cancer Prevention Approach

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