Phillips-Beck - cultural context

In First Nation communities and a lot of Indigenous cultures around the world, there’s a lot of work that we can do to promote healthy pregnancies and promote positive maternal outcomes in our communities.  And this can be done through education and health promotion campaigns that really pay attention to the practices and the traditional knowledge that exists in these communities.  So a lot of public health and messages that you would read on billboards, for instance, and provided through a pamphlet or reading material, sometimes may not resonate in Indigenous communities because it’s just something that is foreign to that community.

So I think paying attention to the unique context of Indigenous communities using their own beliefs and their traditional knowledges that is healthy, that has been there for generations and using the resources and the strengths of that community.  So it’s very important to not be too generic and general in the public health messaging but to sometimes incorporate traditional teachings, traditional knowledge, Indigenous knowledge, Indigenal faces, Indigenal voices and the respecting the belief system that had a lot of merit for keeping mothers healthy.