Giving Compass' Take:

• Physician and researcher, Janet Smylie, has been studying racism toward the Indigenous people within Canada's healthcare system for fifteen years and offers insight as to why this is happening. 

• The Government of Northwest Territories was provided a list of recommendations to address problems in the healthcare system. One of them is offering a cultural training. Is this an effective form of tackling implicit bias? 

• Read about the implicit bias training in the United States to address the high maternal mortality rates of black women. 

Anti-Indigenous racism in Canada’s health care system is leading to unnecessary deaths, according to research reported on this week.

Dr. Janet Smylie, a Métis physician and a researcher at the Centre for Urban Health Solutions at St. Michael's Hospital, has been studying the effects of anti-Indigenous racism in the country’s system for the last 15 years, CBC reported . Anti-Indigenous racism has already been highlighted in the Northwest Territories’ health care system, but Smylie has found it to be a problem not just in NWT, but across Canada.

Smylie said the racism is not always intentional but can be "implicit." For example, First Nation, Inuit, and Métis communities do not always see the same public health messages as the rest of Canadians — so their rates of commercial tobacco use are higher.

Aklavik elder Hugh Papik died of a stroke in August 2016 after health care workers assumed he was drunk. Following his death, an external investigation led to 16 recommendations for the Government of Northwest Territories to act on, in order to address the need for reform in the territory’s health care system.

One of the recommendations was cultural training for health-care workers.

NWT Health Minister Glen Abernethy, who has visited with many people in the NWT that have expressed concern over racism in the health care system, said training is on its way.

Addressing racism and social bias in health care could prevent unnecessary deaths and lead to overall better health for all, which is what Abernathy is essentially trying to accomplish in the NWT.

Read the full article about racism in health care by Jackie Marchildon at Global Citizen