H.E.A.L. Healthcare. Using Art to Address Biases in Healthcare

This workshop will introduce participants to the H.E.A.L. project.

The Hearts-based Education and Anti-colonial Learning curriculum (H.E.A.L.) brings together artists, writers, activists, and people with lived experience to create arts-based anti-oppression learning materials for healthcare educators, professionals, and practitioners.

H.E.A.L.’s goal is for healthcare professionals to use arts to address oppressive behaviours and attitudes that we all hold and that permeate healthcare systems and culture. HEALhealthcare.ca curricula address longstanding and well-established evidence that health disparities exist because of racist, colonial, able-body/minded, geographic, economic, and gendered inequities. The development of the website itself was an artful and creative act of relationship building and story-sharing.

The H.E.A.L. Healthcare learning resource is for everyone who touches healthcare: practicing healthcare providers and professionals, healthcare staff and administrators, healthcare educators and institutions, and healthcare students.

This workshop will introduce participants to the H.E.A.L. project and explore the HEALhealthcare.ca website to showcase the diverse learning resources available there for free. Additionally, participants will be invited to colour from the HARC colouring book (a work of art designed by a young trans First Nations man) and share stories and experiences in an effort to build relationship and reflect on personal biases.

More on HEALhealthcare.ca

We encourage folks to visit and explore the website and/or watch the introductory animation about HEALhealthcare ahead of the workshop.

Direct link to the colouring book we’ll be working from.

Facilitators

X’staam Hana’ax (Nicole Halbauer) is a dedicated member of the Ts’msyen community, Kitsumkalum, and belongs to the Ganhada p’teex (clan) of the Waap (House) of K’oom. With over a decade of advocacy work in northern British Columbia, Nicole has been a strong advocate for decolonized governance in community organizations.

She has held significant leadership roles, including Chair of the Board of Governors at Coast Mountain College, Vice Chair of BC Assessment, and various other provincial and community positions. Beyond her professional endeavors, Nicole is deeply committed to her family, raising six children and cherishing her two grandchildren. Her personal experiences shape her work, with a strong belief that reconciliation is essential to the health and well-being of a community.

Michelle Roberge lives with her family tucked away in the trees on a beautiful west facing hill within the traditional territories of Saik’uz Whut’en, in north-central British Columbia, Canada.

Here, when not working her day job(s), she grows food with her husband and children on their off-grid farm. Inspired by her childhood of catching (trying to catch) fish on the ocean and lakes of Vancouver Island, Michelle pursued a Bachelor of Science degree in Ecology and Environmental Biology at UBC, and immediately followed it with a Master of Science degree in Zoology.

Although Michelle started her working life as a fisheries biologist, her life and career has led her down many different and intersecting paths and experiences working in graphic design, health, education, agriculture, and anti-racism awareness. Michelle joined the HARC team to support the HEALhealthcare.ca project as the digital archivist and designer.