Project 449122

Indigenous Peoples in Canada are affected by diabetes at much higher rates than the Canadian average. A culturally appropriate, sustainable, scalable approach is needed to create healthier environments that will reverse the upward trajectory of diabetes in Indigenous communities. Our Indigenous Diabetes Reduction Bond aims to sustainably reduce diabetes rates. Upfront capital from impact investors will fund customized infrastructure and healthy lifestyle interventions. Successful outcomes will be purchased by governments, who will benefit from the associated reduced health care costs. These funds will drive sustainable re-investment in the program. This proposal is about augmenting the pilot phase of the Bond. With our partner communities we will identify additional health and wellness outcomes that are beyond our current health economics scope. These outcomes will integrate traditional Indigenous concepts of holistic wellness with Western biomedical science. They will include direct measures of diabetes risk as well as related measures such as sleep, stress, and emotional health. We will use these measures to conduct baseline assessments of diabetes risk and wellness, and then to provide an early assessment of the impact of the interventions. The additional funding will help us identify new ways of evaluating the impact of diabetes prevention and wellness promotion interventions. This will accelerate and enhance our engagement with impact investors and outcomes purchasers and allow us to scale up our work more rapidly and efficiently. The findings from this project will be immediately implemented by four pilot communities in the Island Lake region to further develop local diabetes prevention and health promotion efforts. They will also guide the design of the next few phases of the Indigenous Diabetes Reduction Bond. In the longer term, the same model can be adapted to address other health problems that disproportionately affect Indigenous people in Canada.