This year, Xwi7xwa Library and the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences launched a new type of course activity which takes an integrative approach to pharmaceutical care, community research ethics, and library skills.
Kayla Lar-Son, Indigenous Programs and Services Librarian at Xwi7xwa Library, collaborated with Jason Min and Larry Leung, both Assistant Professors of Teaching in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, during the creation of Pharmaceutical Care in Indigenous Health (PHAR 323), a community-based, Indigenous health elective for third year pharmacy students. The course pilot launched in January 2021 and was made possible through funding from the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund.
Thinking back to the course planning process, Lar-Son says: “We talked about things that students [pharmacists] might need to know before they go work with communities, and where the library fits in. Then building on some of the research and my interests, I thought about how to incorporate that into an online library class. So it’s a little bit of library and also Indigenous Studies put together.”
Working with student librarian Rio Picollo, Lar-Son created a six-video series for the course that was made available to students on Canvas as a way to introduce the library and its resources, before diving deeper into key topics such as community research protocols, Indigenous research methodologies, and data sovereignty—all from an Indigenous viewpoint. It was important for Lar-Son to embed the voices of community members within the videos, particularly on topics like responsible and ethical research practices, where the community perspective is critical.
“One of the videos is Chief Simon Baker talking about why collaborative research is important, and how it not only benefits the community, but it benefits the relationship between the community and the institution,” says Lar-Son. Each video module, she notes, is designed with activities to help students take what they’ve learned and apply it to their own research and to start thinking critically about their role in relationship to the communities with whom they will be working.
“Our initial involvement with Xwi7xwa library started about 10 years ago. Back then, we were working directly with a number of First Nations communities across B.C. and had a hard time finding Indigenous resources and literature to support our work. We engaged with Xwi7xwa to help us learn more and benefitted greatly from the tremendous generosity and expertise from the librarians,” says Min, who notes that he and Leung quickly realized that there was much to learn—and unlearn during this process: “The pharmacy curriculum, as other health education programs, takes a western, scientific approach, with library resources and support directly related to things like evidence appraisal, search strategies, and resource retrieval. However, we recognize that it is also very important to teach students about community-centered approaches and Indigenous knowledge systems.” In particular, he says, the nation-specific collections at Xwi7xwa have been a tremendous resource for their students, who had the opportunity to work directly with community partners on a project.
“It’s important for students to know ethical research practices and start practicing that from an early start in their career,” says Lar-Son. “Because when it comes to specific communities, you need to go further than research ethics boards and really think critically about the research process and research ethics and who is being protected within those policies. Hopefully this course can help these students to build more capacity, which in turn will be better for the community and build better relationships.”
Over the summer Min and Leung developed a new Indigenous health course that will launch next year as Canada’s first mandatory, Indigenous health pharmacy course. The video content Lar-Son and Picollo produced will be integrated in this new course, expanding its audience even further.
Learn more about some of the topics covered in the course, visit Xwi7xwa Library’s online guide to Indigenous research methodologies.
This project is part of UBC Library’s strategic direction to engage with communities.
To learn more about our Strategic Framework, click here.
