Indigenous People Don’t Feel Safe Accessing Health Care. Here’s What Has to Change – TheTyee.ca

It will require big systemic shifts, but also smaller things like signage, say experts.

Fighting systemic racism in health care will take more than educating individual health-care providers in British Columbia, experts say.

Reports that health-care staff in B.C.’s emergency rooms played racist “games” based on guessing Indigenous patients’ blood alcohol levels have drawn renewed attention to structural racism and the harms of stigma in the province’s health-care system.

When the reports surfaced, the BC Association of Aboriginal Friendship Centres and the Métis Nation BC called for a public inquiry into Indigenous-specific racism in health in B.C. and said that all health-care providers should be required to take Indigenous-focused training.

But until Indigenous and racialized people no longer face issues like poverty, inadequate housing and lower education and employment opportunities — the social determinants of health — and access to care is equitable, experts say anti-bias and anti-racism training is like putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg.

Read More: https://thetyee.ca/News/2020/07/09/Indigenous-People-Accessing-Health-Care-Not-Safe/