80 An environmental scan of Indigenous health and social services for children and families in Canadian children’s hospitals
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Indigenous (First Nations, Inuit, or Métis) children represent the future of their strong cultures and resilient communities. However, medical colonialism, anti-Indigenous racism and other structural and environmental determinants of health have contributed to ongoing disparities in hospital care for Indigenous compared to non-Indigenous children. Few studies have examined the care and services addressing the needs of Indigenous children and their families in the hospital setting. Objectives The overall goal of our study was to conduct an environmental scan of services specific to Indigenous children and families in children’s hospitals across Canada. Design/Methods Our team of researchers, scholars, and clinicians (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) conducted an environmental scan of services specific to Indigenous children and families in all 15 children’s hospitals across Canada within the infrastructure of the Canadian Paediatric Inpatient Research Network (PIRN) and the Pediatric Outcomes imProvement through COordination of Research Networks (POPCORN). We collected data from publicly available documents and conducted semi-structured interviews with healthcare practitioners, service providers, and administrators between June and November 2024. Nineteen interviews (5 Indigenous, 14 non-Indigenous participants) were conducted across 14 out of 15 eligible children’s hospitals. Data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Results There was considerable variation in the services for Indigenous children and families provided by children’s hospitals. Most are working with multiple external community agencies to meet the needs of Indigenous children and families. Few have implemented smudging policies and Indigenous (physical) spaces. We observed gaps in institution-led strategic approaches to Indigenous health, hospital data collection on Indigenous identity, care and outcomes, and the recruitment and retention of Indigenous staff. There are variations in the implementation of cultural safety, the role of Indigenous patient navigators, and physician knowledge on the various services available. Conclusion Most participants requested to learn about the programs and policies that exist and participate in the knowledge exchange of study findings. By sharing the successes and challenges of current Indigenous-specific services identified, we aim to advance the agenda for the TRC: Calls to Action, Joyce’s Principle, and cultural safety in Canadian children’s hospitals. Next steps may include identifying the needs, benchmarks, and best practices to support Indigenous children and their families in the hospital setting.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.012 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".