Benoit Cecilia, Carroll Dena, Chaudhry Munaza
Department of Sociology, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3050, Victoria, BC, Canada V8W 3P5.
Soc Sci Med. 2003 Feb;56(4):821-33. doi: 10.1016/s0277-9536(02)00081-3.
Research on general health service delivery in urban areas of Canada shows that Aboriginal people face formidable barriers in accessing culturally appropriate and timely care. Over the past decade, Urban Aboriginal Health Centres (UAHCs) have emerged to address the unmet health concerns of Aboriginal people living in metropolitan areas of the country. The purpose of this research was to address the gap in social science literature on how the health care concerns of Aboriginal women are being met by UAHCs. The research aimed to give voice to Aboriginal women by asking them whether the appropriate professional services and educational programs they need to address their health care needs were being provided in the inner city. A case-study approach was used whereby three separate focus groups were conducted with Aboriginal women who were clients of the Vancouver Native Health Society (VNHS), its sister organization, Sheway, or residents of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES). In addition, twenty-five semi-structured interviews were conducted with VNHS staff, health providers, government representatives, and community leaders in health care (total n=61). The findings indicate that despite efforts from various quarters to articulate the health and social concerns of the country's marginalized populations, such has not been the case for Aboriginal women living in one of Canada's most prosperous cities. Many Aboriginal women expressed a strong desire for a Healing Place, based on a model of care where their health concerns are addressed in an integrated manner, where they are respected and given the opportunity to shape and influence decision-making about services that impact their own healing.
加拿大城市地区普通医疗服务提供情况的研究表明，原住民在获得符合其文化特点且及时的医疗服务方面面临巨大障碍。在过去十年中，城市原住民健康中心（UAHCs）应运而生，以解决居住在该国大都市地区的原住民未得到满足的健康问题。本研究的目的是填补社会科学文献中关于UAHCs如何满足原住民女性医疗保健需求方面的空白。该研究旨在通过询问原住民女性在内城区是否能获得她们解决医疗保健需求所需的适当专业服务和教育项目，来倾听她们的声音。研究采用了案例研究方法，与温哥华原住民健康协会（VNHS）及其姊妹组织Sheway的原住民女性客户，或温哥华市中心东区（DTES）的居民进行了三个独立的焦点小组讨论。此外，还对VNHS工作人员、医疗服务提供者、政府代表和医疗保健领域的社区领袖进行了25次半结构化访谈（总计n = 61）。研究结果表明，尽管各方努力阐述该国边缘化人群的健康和社会问题，但对于生活在加拿大最繁荣城市之一的原住民女性来说，情况并非如此。许多原住民女性表达了对一个康复场所的强烈渴望，该场所基于一种护理模式，以综合方式解决她们的健康问题，在那里她们受到尊重，并有机会塑造和影响关于影响自身康复的服务的决策。
