Aboriginal Health Initiative Program (AHIP)
What is the Aboriginal Health Initiative Program?
The Aboriginal Health Initiative Program (AHIP) was launched in 2002 as a regional community based funding program to support and encourage Aboriginal communities to identify health promotion projects that are culturally meaningful to them. Successful projects include mechanisms to gather community input and ways to measure project outcomes. AHIP initiatives help achieve the goals outlined in the Aboriginal Health and Wellness Plan 2008-2011.
Funding Opportunity: AHIP funds for 2012-2013, $20,000 Health Promotion Grants:
Proposal Call Out: Tuesday October 25th, 2011
Proposals deadline: Monday December 12th, 2011.
First Nations communities, Métis and urban Aboriginal organizations and First Nations communities in the Vancouver Coastal Health region are invited to submit a proposal to AHIP funding as the first step in exploring the development and funding of community-based health promotion projects. Deadline is Monday, December 12th, 2011. View guidelines and application forms for details.
Upcoming Training Opportunities
Aboriginal Health Strategic Initiatives announces these exciting and free training events in the upcoming months:
- Cultural Canoe Journey – January 25, 2012
- Tsleil-Waututh Nation Cultural Awareness Day – January 30, 2012
- Aboriginal Community Kitchen Leadership Workshop – March 9, 2012
- 13th Annual Aboriginal Mental Health Conference – Aboriginal Elders: The Forgotten Ones – March 15th & 16th, 2012
At anytime VCH Employees can register for the Indigenous Cultural Competency Training (Core ICC Health) at the following link: www.culturalcompetency.ca/training. The course is free to all VCH employees and can be completed online in 8 hours over an 8 week period.
Health Promotion Projects
AHIP Supports Aboriginal communities to provide locally responsive health promotion projects in the following 5 broad streams:
- Mental Wellness and Self-Esteem: refers to a person’s level of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual balance, feelings of well being
and ability to respond in positive ways when faced with life’s
situations and challenges; ability to have meaningful relationships with
family and feel good about oneself in those relationships. Having good
Mental Wellness and Self-Esteem can help prevent addictions.
- Chronic or Infectious Disease: are illnesses that last for a long time
with symptoms that can change over time and may have times of
severe illness. Some examples are cancer, arthritis, diabetes, asthma,
hypertension, lupus, emphysema. Infectious diseases
are caused by a germ (virus or bacteria) that can be passed from
person to person and makes people sick. Some Infectious Diseases
are also chronic, such as AIDS/HIV and hepatitis.
- Access to Health Care Services: work with VCH, your community and other agencies to develop innovative and interactive ways to access health services.
- Early Childhood: is a time of physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual growth in Aboriginal children aged 0 to 6 years old. Some examples of health promotion in early childhood are supporting
parenting programs, school readiness programs, parent and tot
programs or infant programs. Helping parents learn from elders
about traditional ways of parenting can help young children feel connected to
their community.
- Local Community Food Security: happens when Aboriginal community
members have healthy, safe traditional foods that are
easily accessible and sustainable. The traditional diets of Aboriginal people has changed over the years, and many do not have access to well balanced and healthy traditional foods. Finding ways to increase knowledge of our cultural teachings of traditional food sources will help support Local Food Security in our society today.
AHIP Success Stories
- Aboriginal Patients’ Lodge Mental Health & Wellness Program (Lu’ma Native Housing Society) promotes social connections between members by offering cultural workshops, community cooking sessions and health promotion workshops.
- Chronic Disease Prevention & Management (Nuxalk First Nation) supports healthy lifestyles in the Nuxalk community by promoting chronic disease prevention, self-management techniques and daily active living.
- Musqueam Family Wellness Program (Musqueam First Nation) enhances community capacity by training individuals to deliver parenting programs for parents and children under 12 years old.
- Urban Aboriginal Food Enhancement Program (Vancouver Native Health Society) provides capacity and community building opportunities, addresses food security issues, supports a food buying group and a community garden for Aboriginal families.
Newly funded projects participate in the “Splash & Ripple” [pdf] training. This will help applicants to develop an Outcome Measurement Framework and a Monitoring Plan to help guide each projects activities and outcomes. The Splash and Ripple workshop training is held in January of each year. The Funding Cycle Diagram indicates other important dates for all AHIP projects.
AHIP 2011-2012 Funded Programs
For More Information
Leah Karpan
AHIP Program Assistant
Aboriginal Health Initiative Program
Suite 550, 601 W. Broadway
Vancouver, BC V5Z 4C2
Tel: 604-875-5600 ext. 63295
Fax: 604-875-4846
Email: leah.karpan@vch.ca
Urban Aboriginal Community Kitchen Garden Project
Last year SMARTFund sponsored Vancouver Native Health Society’s “Urban Aboriginal Community Kitchen Garden Project” to have a DVD produced on the wonderful work that is being done to create positive change for program participants, this is the end product of that session.
In February 2009 AHSI sponsored a Cultural Competency and Inclusion Forum to increase responsiveness of VCH staff to Aboriginal people’s health needs. Below is a link to the DVD which contains interviews of presenters and participants of the forum.
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