Regionalization as an Opportunity for Meaningful Indigenous Participation in Healthcare: Comparing Canada and New Zealand

In Canada and New Zealand, policies support Indigenous participation in the planning and delivery of community-based primary health services. However, these services represent only a fraction of the health services accessed by Indigenous peoples. In New Zealand, legislation enacted in 2000 introduced mechanisms to ensure that Māori have a voice in the decisions made by health boards. In Canada, neither policies nor legislation currently ensure that Aboriginal communities are represented in provincial health systems or regional health boards. The New Zealand experience shows that adding mechanisms of participation to legislation and policies creates opportunities for Māori and health boards to engage in discussions about how to best allocate resources to reduce disparities between Māori and non-Māori health outcomes. In Canada, this dialogue may not occur. Requiring that such mechanisms be created in all Canadian jurisdictions would establish meeting places for dialogue, and assist in closing policy and access gaps that remain

A Journey of Doing Research “In a Good Way”: Partnership, Ceremony, and Reflections Contributing to the Care and Wellbeing of Indigenous Women Living with HIV in Canada

The relationship between the First Peoples of Canada and researchers is changing as processes of self-determination and reconciliation are increasingly implemented. We used storytelling and ceremony to describe a historic event, the Indigenous Women’s Data Transfer Ceremony, where quantitative data of 318 Indigenous women living with HIV were transferred to Indigenous academic and community leaders. Relationship building, working together with a common vision, the Ceremony, and the subsequent activities were summarized as a journey of two boats. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's Calls to Action and Indigenous ethical principles were central to the process. The article ends with team members’ reflections and the importance of shifting power to Indigenous Peoples in regard to data collection, their stories, and the resulting policies

Chapter six – Inelastic Collisions of Energetic Protons in Biological Media

We study the energy deposited by swift proton beams on materials of biological interest, such as liquid water, DNA, and PMMA. An appropriate description of the target energy-loss function, which provides its electronic excitation spectrum, is obtained from available experimental optical data properly extended to non-vanishing momentum transfers. The main magnitudes characterizing the energy-loss distribution of the beam particles in the target are calculated analytically (in the dielectric framework) and compared with available experimental data. The depth–dose distribution of the energy delivered by the proton beam on the biological targets is simulated by the SEICS (Simulation of Energetic Ions and Clusters through Solids) code, which includes the main interaction phenomena between the projectile and the target constituents by means of Molecular Dynamics and Monte Carlo techniques. Also, the proton-beam energy distribution at several depths in the target for liquid water and PMMA are simulated, and finally, the properties of PMMA as a water-equivalent material are discussed.This work has been financially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (Project FIS2010-17225) and the European Union FP7 ANTICARB (HEALTH-F2-2008-201587). PdV thanks the Conselleria d’Educació, Formació i Ocupació de la Generalitat Valenciana for its support under the VALi+d program. This research is part of the COST Action MP 1002, Nanoscale Insights into Ion Beam Cancer Therapy