Your donations create more firsts for true healing.
We are working to build a healthcare system that recognizes and respects Indigenous leadership over their own health matters, makes space for community voices, and prioritizes and integrates cultural competencies in health service practice.
With your donations, we are empowering Indigenous communities through healthcare. Like cultural inclusion initiatives that promote reconciliation and whole-person healing.
Support Indigenous Health today!Focusing on Indigenous Health
Focusing on Indigenous Health means building and nurturing meaningful and sustained relationships with Indigenous communities. It means recognizing the wisdom of Indigenous wellness practices and their expertise in their own lives.
Calgary Health Foundation will focus on areas that support Alberta Health Service’s Indigenous Health Action Plan and the Indigenous Wellness Core for Calgary-Zone. These areas include:
Building cultural sensitivity into patient care – enhancing cultural sensitivity in care spaces, care practices and design (Elbow River Healing Lodge, culturally safe spaces in acute care settings).
Improving access to ancestral medicine – understanding and incorporating ancestral medicine into practice (medicine gardens, Elder in-residence programs, cultural ceremony practices in care).
Educating to improve care – reduce stigma and improving our cultural understanding.
Addressing high-risk illnesses and wellness (kidney care, maternal and newborn care, mental health, and addictions initiatives).
You can have an impact on Indigenous people across Southern Alberta.
Read these inspiring stories, highlighting the importance of including community voices and priorities and cultural competencies in health service practices.
Indigenous communities have unique practices with ties to knowledge, traditions, medicine, and ceremonies that have been passed down for generations. There is a great opportunity to incorporate these important cultural practices into our healthcare system. Cenovus Energy believes advancing Indigenous reconciliation means taking meaningful action. That’s why Cenovus generously donated $250,000—through Calgary Health Foundation—toward the renovation of Elbow River Healing Lodge.
Alyssa has always embraced her Metis heritage, ensuring that while pursuing her education in Midwifery, that it was shaped by collaborating with Metis mentors. She actively advocated for opportunities to work with vulnerable Indigenous communities. She’s currently enrolled at Mount Royal University and received one of three Indigenous Health Scholarships from Calgary Health Foundation for the excellence she’s shown in pursuing education in a healthcare field and involvement and dedication to her community.
September 30 is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day to recognize the tragedy of the residential school system. Calgary Health Foundation joins our peers to memorialize the children lost to the residential school system and honour Survivors and their families. Indigenous Health is a priority for Calgary Health Foundation.
Your support will help move towards decolonizing our healthcare system.
Providing a culturally safe space is important. Elbow River Healing Lodge was designed to engage patients with wrap-around holistic care. This means that the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of health and wellness are addressed at Elbow River Healing Lodge.
Watch the video