Cancer Screening Pathways for Indigenous Communities

Peter Jones Design for Care, Health design

In healthcare design, many projects are done over stages of study, proto-construction, and longer/deeper feedback cycles than in private sector or commercial projects. One of our OCADU Health Design collaborative design projects, with Cancer Care Ontario (CCO), initiated pre-Covid and after some time in reviews, was recently completed and distributed to stakeholders. The First Nations Cancer Screening Access Guides were designed in collaboration with Laura Senese, senior researcher with Cancer Care Ontario, working with PI Dr. Jill Tinmouth with Sunnybrook Research Institute. The Access Guide, a bespoke product for the Wequedong Lodge, was finalized and recently printed in English, French, Ojibway and Oji-Cree language versions. The baseline English version we designed (with the ideas and design work from several research assistants) was created as a concise, vernacular, culturally-relevant guideline for First Nations use across Ontario. While in principle the design of a health communication artifact is a straightforward process of …