About
Indigenous children and families are often misunderstood and mistreated by healthcare professionals – an issue at the heart of the Aboriginal Children’s Hurt & Healing Initiative (ACHH Initiative).
Academic and Health Professionals
Knowledge & Research
The ACHH Initiative’s ultimate goal is to gather and combine traditional and Western knowledge to better understand how Indigenous children’s pain is experienced, expressed, interpreted, assessed and treated.
Research in Action – The ACHH App
The ACHH App will allow children to articulate their pain and hurt through stories and descriptions, while remaining stoic in their pain expression.
Our Progress
The first step in understanding the way Indigenous children express their hurt is to establish culturally-safe approaches to pain care.
Education
One of the most important aspects of the ACHH Initiative is to share our findings with clinicians and students to improve how they communicate with, assess and treat Indigenous children.
Presentations, Publications and Media
Recent publications, presentations and media related to the ACHH Initiative findings further community engagement work.
Events
ACHH Initiative team members regularly travel around the country to share the research findings and start the conversation about improving healthcare experiences for Indigenous children and youth.
Early Findings
One of our earliest findings was that, despite the high prevalence of pain conditions among Indigenous children, there were only an estimated two out of 800 Indigenous children who were referred to the IWK Health Complex Pain Team from across the Maritime Provinces.