Culturally humble approaches to engaging Indigenous youth in community-based primary health care research.

The Canadian Institute of Health Research is transforming health research through commitment to community-based primary health care. This paradigm shift creates evidence-informed practices through the engagement of those with lived experience in assisting policy-makers to implement culturally-appropriate and equitable access to health services. An exploratory community-based participatory materialized through community involvement establishing a community-university partnership. The purpose of this research was to illuminate the experiences of SLFN girls in relation to 'empowerment' and 'disempowerment' to discover strategies used to foster empowerment and identify opportunities for community development. Method: The study used youth engagement and was co-facilitated and -designed by a senior participant. Overall 10 girls participated and were between the ages of 10 to 12 years old. Arts-based methods were employed to have the girls create an 'Empowerment Blueprint'; symbolizing a visual representation of empowerment in their lives. Participatory analysis was used. The findings highlight the importance of including First Nation girls' voices in the design and delivery of health promoting empowerment initiatives and the value of collaborative value-based research methods in mobilizing girls' commitment towards transforming primary health care grounded in their experiences. Aligning with CIHR's commitment to community-based primary health care, working collaborating to amplify voices of those from equity seeking groups, the girls identified barriers to empowerment as hunger and poverty influencing their health and well-being. The benefits of this exploratory study are to help illuminate how girls in SLFN experience various influences that shape their daily lives, and how they characterize these influences as empowering or disempowering to inform health promoting strategies.