New research centre on Aboriginal health

In May, the UVic senate approved the Centre for Aboriginal Health Research. Built on the foundation of UVic’s Aboriginal Health Research Group, the new centre will promote the health and well-being of Indigenous peoples, whose health disparities require urgent attention. This change in status will better position the centre’s faculty and student members to take advantage of funding opportunities in interdisciplinary research and training. Centre researchers will focus on the strengths, challenges, opportunities and problems of Indigenous Peoples and the societal structures and institutions that affect them. The director of the new centre is epidemiologist Jeff Reading, who headed the research group and is also the scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research—Institute of Aboriginal Peoples’ Health, based at UVic.