Health status of on and off-reserve aboriginal peoples

Health Status of On and Off-reserve Aboriginal Peoples: Analysis of the Aboriginal Peoples Survey Lori J Curtis Department of Economics University of Waterloo Abstract: The government of Canada is committed to closing the health status gap between First Nation’s (FN) and non-First Nation’s peoples in Canada. [...] It is also true that the socio-economic status and health behaviours of FN peoples are, on average, worse than that of the remainder of the population (Tjepkma et al., 2002). [...] Since the early 1990s, following the release of the ‘Whitehall studies’ (Smith et al., 1990; Smith et al., 1990b) and the evolution of the population health paradigm (Evans and Stoddart, 1990 and Evans et al., 1994), it has been widely accepted that health is not solely determined by clinical factors and genetics; there are behavioural, social, and economic determinants of health (referred to by m [...] Unconditional Health Disparities The literature on the unconditional health disparities between FN and non-FN peoples, research is limited to reporting over-all differences in some measure of health, focusing on a limited ‘bio- medical’ model (Cass, 2004) and ignoring the broader determinants of health. [...] He then examines FN living on-reserve, and off-reserve urban and off-reserve rural and Inuit; results indicate that the differences between on and off-reserve FN peoples tends to be related to whether the individual lives in a rural or urban area.