“CIHR Gets Funding For Aboriginal Health Research No Plan or Questions Asked”
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Today the Federal government announced 30 Million dollars in funding to “Canadian Institute for Health and Research”. CIHR have announced no concrete plans for the 30 Million, which is to go towards obesity, suicide, and TB prevention in Aboriginal communities.
This announcement comes nine days before the Native Aboriginal Health Organization is set to loose it’s funding for good. NAHO, an organization who took a 4.4 Million dollar budget and turned it into 60 Million dollars in research assets alone, while helping many communities and providing 19,200 jobs ; already had comprehensive education plans, prevention tactics and easily accessible information, which had made a bigger impact in improving Native Health in 12 years then Health Canada has in it’s entire existence.
The complete defunding of NAHO in favor of giving 30 Million dollars to a different group to restart on what NAHO seems like an illogical move on the governments part. Prior to NAHOs existence, information about those living in aboriginal communities had not been invested in and had not been collected. In these areas where the government had not previously collected data most of the problems could be solved with prevention; this in turn, makes the government look really irresponsible, and as we have seen in our territories, if it is a problem the government would rather deny it’s existence.
In opting for a branch of government to do the work of a research organization, the research is likely to have a government bias. If it makes the government look bad, it will be skewed or minimized.
With CIHR lacking in a plan we’d be lucky to get skewed or minimized data. It seems the government is just throwing money at things and hoping it lands in the right places or at least places in their favor.
It may be too early to be pessimistic but it’s never to early to be skeptical.
