Dissertation to look at Indigenous policy making

Cassandra Opikokew, associate director at Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre, will use a $108,000 stipend from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research doctoral research award over the next three years to work on her dissertation project titled The Indian Solution to the Policy Problem: Developing an Indigenous Policy Making Model, in which she is comparing health and education policy failure among Indigenous populations within Canada, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand. Opikokew, from Canoe Lake First Nation, was one of about 180 Canadian doctoral students chosen by CIHR for dissertation research funding this year. “Cassandra’s was a most excellent application,” Kelly Vantkoughnet, associate vice-president of research and knowledge translation at the CIHR, told the Leader-Post. “(It was) very intuitive and really demonstrated innovation in terms of what kind of project (IPHRC) was putting forward.”