Purpose & Goals
The purpose of the CLC initiative is to understand the efficacy of CLCs in improving:
- access to community-defined health information
- connections to traditional contexts of medicine, health and language
- social health factors
The geographical isolation that many rural, remote and Aboriginal communities face can prevent their access to culturally relevant, community driven, and language appropriate health education. To bridge this gap, the goals of the Ktunaxa CLCs are to:
- Successfully Implement the CLCs: Successful CLC implementation includes effectively training and mentoring community leads, maintaining a high and consistent level of community engagement, building trusting partnerships, providing relevant CLC content to community members, and incorporating community members’ feedback and interest to change.
- Effectively Engage the Communities: Effective community engagement requires obtaining feedback from all stakeholders including community members (Elders, youth, adults, etc.), CLC developers, CLC administrators, and health care professionals. Community engagement also includes assessing the quality and variety of health information sources being used, monitoring user characteristics, and looking into user satisfaction with technology
- Prioritize Relevant Health Priorities: Valuable promotion of health education in the First Nations context can be illustrated by changes in perception of health status, uptake of local and traditional health information, improvement in knowledge and ability to manage health concerns, raised awareness of health issues and support services, increased connection to wellness, and promotion of a patient-centered care model.
