Regional Diabetes Strategy

Executive Summary

The Shibogama First Nations Council Regional Diabetes Strategy (RDS) focusses on the collective needs of its members in five communities: Wunnumin Lake, Kingfisher Lake, Wapekeka, Kasabonika Lake, and Wawakapewin First Nations. The RDS utilizes five categories of the Ontario Aboriginal Diabetes Strategy (OADS) including Prevention, Care and Treatment, Education, Research and Coordination. The RDS focusses on self-governance and autonomy so that the community members can determine their own way of care which has been shown to include physical activity, Traditional Plant Medicine knowledge including food acquisition.

The RDS consists of program development that focusses on integrating traditional practices within the current Diabetes care within each community and is intended to be driven by community diabetes workers, health personnel and community members. The focus of the Curative manual is to help community members to leverage the forest as the resource of healing. The purpose is to integrate western and traditional aspects of healing for Diabetes. Gaps in care that have been identified have been filled in part with the assistance of the Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority (SLFNHA) as well as through the further integration of traditional medicine and foods within the communities.

The statistics of the communities have indicated that there has been an increase in residents of the Shibogama communities, 599 individuals moved into community during the period of the 2020 pandemic noted in the 2021 census data. There has been an increase in the incidence of diabetes partly due to this increase in population, though also likely due to the progression of the disease in youth under 18 specifically in Kasabonika First Nation.

The entire document is available for download below.