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The newly hired chair of Aboriginal Health at the University of Alberta has some big plans and big challenges ahead of her.

Sangita Sharma has a wealth of experience in working with Indigenous people’s health and nutrition around the world.

“I think it’s really important to have an understanding, to immerse yourself in the culture,” she explained.
Her first priority is to establish a centre for excellence, in Edmonton preferably, that will benefit the health of Canadian Aboriginal people and others across the globe.
She sees the centre as a reflection of what the First Nations community wants and needs and anticipates it becoming the “go to place” for people wanting information or help with chronic disease, such as cancer and heart disease.

Sharma also plans to match what people see as important with what research is being done.

“We’re hoping that we can actually translate some of the research that goes on at the university into these prevention programs so that it’s more beneficial to the community,” she stated.

Her second priority is a Canadian Indigenous wellness network, already underway, which would find out what the real issues facing Aboriginal communities are, whether that is access to better food, mental health or areas like traditional languages.

A third priority is taking students in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, hungry for knowledge and information, and giving them some practical experience.
“It’s our job to prepare students really well for future endeavours and that rightly includes global health issues and Aboriginal health,” Sharma said. Preparation could take the form of exchanges in the communities the students are learning about, in Canada and abroad.
Sharma is from the United Kingdom and holds a PhD in nutritional epidemiology from the University of Manchester. She has worked with ethnic people in Brazil, Cameroon, Trinidad, Indonesia, Jamaica, her homeland, the United States and Canada.

Clifford Cardinal, who was hired at the U of A several years ago as part of an effort to include Aboriginal health in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, said Sharma’s background convinced him that she was the best person for the job, despite the fact that she is not an Aboriginal North American.

“I’m totally committed and supportive of the choice the university took in this case,” he said. “Once I had seen her (curriculum vitae) and her past work, I just couldn’t see for us to lose someone of that calibre.”

He acknowledges that Sharma is going to have to work to convince people to accept her and, more importantly, share what is considered sacred knowledge in the university’s quest to document traditional healing methods and medicines.

“What she has to know is that healers have their own protocols,” Cardinal said. “She has a lot of work ahead of her and I don’t envy her.”

He hopes that the Aboriginal health chair will grow to become its own faculty and sees Sharma as the right person to achieve that goal.

“I think that Gita is a person to get it recognized as a department,” he said.