Exploring the Experiences of Indigenous Patients Accessing Naturopathic Medicine in Thunder Bay, Ontario
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Health inequities for Indigenous Peoples across Turtle Island have been well documented, but the role of naturopathic doctors in contributing to Indigenous-led healthcare initiatives remains understudied. Very little research exists documenting the experiences of Indigenous individuals with naturopathic medicine. This qualitative research study contributes to addressing this gap by exploring the experiences of twelve Indigenous people who have accessed care from licensed naturopathic doctors in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Couched in discussions about the impact of colonisation and ongoing colonialism on their health and healthcare, participants expressed that the philosophy of naturopathic medicine aligns with Indigenous concepts of health and healing being holistic, collaborative, patient-centred and offering natural treatment options (e.g. plant medicines). In addition, participants experienced naturopathic doctors as trustworthy well-educated healthcare providers who listened. Barriers to accessing naturopathic care included the cost of appointments and prescribed substances; lack of awareness and misconceptions about naturopathic medicine; and geographical limitations. Indigenous patients accessing naturopathic medicine in Thunder Bay articulated that it has a key role to play in the health care they desire for themselves, their families and communities. Future research projects can query whether this finding holds true in other regions, and can explore the role of naturopathic medicine in Indigenous-led healthcare.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".