Cultural safety and humility project

Background

At BCCOHP, our 2024-27 Strategic Plan centers on protecting the public from harm and discrimination in BC’s oral health sector. A key focus is on upholding Indigenous rights and promoting reconciliation in oral health care. We are committed to improving cultural safety and humility and are actively embedding these principles, along with Indigenous-specific anti-racism, into every aspect of our governance and operations. This includes:

Ensuring shared decision-making with Indigenous peoples, including recruiting and retaining Indigenous board, committee and staff members.
Embedding cultural safety and humility and Indigenous specific anti-racism in all aspects of governance and operations and eliminating barriers to Indigenous peoples accessing BCCOHP.
Setting expectations for oral health professionals that support the delivery of culturally safe oral health care (including practice standards and ongoing education/training).
Taking a systemic and holistic approach to cultural safety and humility, including considerations given to anti-racism, distinctions-based and trauma-informed approaches.
Establishing a data-informed tracking system and measurements for ongoing Indigenous cultural safety and humility work and to regularly report on this data.

Who’s listening:

Katy Carson, Director, Cultural Safety & Humility, katy.carson@oralhealthbc.ca.

Rachel Gallo, Senior Policy & Project Manager, rachel.gallo@oralhealthbc.ca.

Resources

Key work

Where we are

At BCCOHP, we have undertaken work to address Indigenous-specific racism in BC’s oral health care sector.

Hired a Director, Cultural Safety and Humility, to build relationships with Indigenous communities and guide our initiatives.
Established an Indigenous consultation circle to provide advice and direction.
Launched an Indigenous Cultural Safety and Humility (CSH) webpage with resources and education for oral health professionals and the public.
Engaged experts in trauma-informed frameworks to help with the strategic implementation of the trauma informed approach.

Looking forward

There is important work ahead as we continue our journey toward a culturally safer oral health sector. We are working to:

Develop the organizational approach and philosophy for CSH.
Develop practice standards for CSH.
Develop a CSH-specific communications and engagement strategy to support this work.
Bring together working groups and subject matter experts for a systemic review of current processes.
Develop culturally safe policies and procedures.
Develop CSH training for management, staff, committees and board
Regular assessment of work; identify gaps; seek feedback; and make improvements.
Develop a sustainability plan for ongoing CSH initiatives.

How you can get involved:

Your input is important to us. Future engagement and consultation opportunities around cultural safety and humility will appear here. In the meantime, sign up for our oral health professionals advisory panel to stay in the loop on future engagement opportunities.