Jennifer Santin
DARE Project: Settler Colonial Public Health Campaigns’ Use of Public Relations
Program(s) of Study: Health & Society
Project Supervisor: Sarah Blacker
My DARE experience allowed me to consider that Indigenous knowledges and Indigenous-led frameworks need to underpin any type of policy initiative that truly seeks to improve the health and lives of Indigenous peoples.
Project Description:
While public health campaigns that are designed for audiences of primarily non-Indigenous Canadians are circulated by provincial and municipal health authorities, public health campaigns that are directed to First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities are frequently produced by the Public Health Agency of Canada. This research project examines how the Public Health Agency of Canada makes use of public relations and strategic communication techniques in the public health campaigns it writes specifically for Indigenous communities. Crucially, this research project situates these public health campaigns as material iterations of the institutionalization of racism and colonialism in Canada today. As prescriptive and moralistic documents, public health campaigns can reveal the ways in which governments often cast aside their responsibility for Indigenous health by producing an epistemic space in which Indigenous communities are frequently blamed for the health inequities they experience. Do public health campaigns authored by the Public Health Agency of Canada address the structural determinants of Indigenous health? Do these campaigns acknowledge the persistent root causes of race-based health inequities in settler colonial Canada? What do these campaigns identify as the causes of race-based health inequities?The Dean’s Award for Research Excellence (DARE) - Undergraduate enables our students to meaningfully engage in research projects supervised by LA&PS faculty members. Find out more about DARE.