Health and Physical Education Awareness
From the website: Obesity is an important health issue among First Nations, Inuit and Métis populations. Self-reported data from 2007 show that obesity rates are higher among off-reserve Aboriginal adults compared to non-Aboriginal people (24.8% vs. 16.6%). Indeed, self-reported data from the 2002/03 First Nations Regional Longitudinal Health Survey demonstrate that prevalence of obesity is particularly high among on-reserve First Nations people: 31.8% of adult men, 41.1% of adult women, 14.0% of youth and 36.2% of children were considered obese.
Type 2 Diabetes is a health concern among Canada's First Nations and Inuit. First Nations on reserve have a rate of diabetes three to five times higher than that of other Canadians. Rates of diabetes among the Inuit are expected to rise significantly in the future given that risk factors such as obesity, physical inactivity, and unhealthy eating patterns are high.
From the document: This report was prepared under contract with the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, and supported by grants from the Fonds de la recherche en santé du Québec, the Conseil québecois de la recherche sociale, and the Institute for Aboriginal Peoples Health of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. These agencies, however, bear no responsibility for its content.
From the document: This review was undertaken under a contract with the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch of Health Canada by Laurence Kirmayer with the assistance of staff and students attached to the Culture and Mental Health Research Unit (CMHRU) of the Department of Psychiatry, Jewish General Hospital. The CMHRU conducts research on the mental health of Indigenous peoples, mental health services for immigrants and refugees, cultural determinants of health behaviors, psychiatry in medicine, and the anthropology of psychiatry. The CMHRU is the lead centre for the National Network for Aboriginal Mental Health Research (NAMHR), which greatly facilitated this work.
