Measuring Wellness

Since time immemorial, First Nations have planned for the health and wellness of their families and communities, grounded in and guided by First Nations traditions and culture.

• What does wellness look and feel like?

• What does Wellness mean specifically to your Nation? Community? Family?

• Most importantly, How do we know when we are making progress towards community wellness?

Today, the opportunity is to revitalize these practices and bodies of knowledge in order to generate heath, wellness, happiness and opportunity for all members of the First Nation.

FNHA and ISC offer a starting point, however, this starting point must be refined to breathe life back into and lift up each Nations’ specific culture, protocols, values, and traditions. We can plan for the future ancestors by learning from our ancestors.

The United Nations offers another, more simplified approach!

Each of these areas could be used to develop a series of objectives.

Each objective could be taken and transformed into a wellness indicator using the question “What would success look like in this area?”

Once we begin collecting our own data and creating our own reports, we may notice trends and correlations between things like increased participation in traditional activities and reduced aggression at community meetings. These are very important trends to notice and share with the community!

For indicators to be the most useful, they need to be easy to use and understandable, as well as:

Valid: measure what they at trying to measure;

Reliable: easy to repeat measurements and get the same results;

Specific: accurately measure only what they are meant to measure;

Measurable: based on available and easy to obtain data ensuring they are tangible and long-lasting;

Relevant: provide clear information for key policy issues relevant to community needs and values;

Cost-effective: benefits of having data must outweigh the costs of collecting information.