The Northern Lights have always danced in the eyes of Dr. Grace Egeland. TV documentaries about the Great White North enchanted her as a child, and once she started working in Alaska with indigenous people, she was completely hooked.
Now, as Canada Research Chair for Environment, Nutrition and Health, Egeland is finding all her life interests, background and experience coalesce at McGill’s Macdonald Campus in Ste. Anne de Bellevue.
“In Canada, we don’t have public health studies in medical school. What’s ironic is in the U.S. they do, but they don’t have public health care,” observes Egeland. With her doctorate in epidemiology from a leading American university in public health studies, Egeland is working passionately, blending a variety of disciplines to help aboriginal people of the North recover and retain healthy diets. A project for International Polar Year is concentrating on how the Inuit are going to adapt to changes, including climate, globalization and Westernization.
“Public health has too many variables,” she says. “Scope is needed for interdisciplinary work.” Egeland’s group is “pushing out the work,” she says, but the devil is in the details. They are missing support to execute the practical work, community outreach and resources. However, the research work done by McGill’s Centre for Indigenous Peoples' Nutrition and Environment (CINE) could serve Canada’s whole aboriginal population, according to Egeland.
“My work at McGill jump-started information for indigenous people that could have moved elsewhere, but it would have been more difficult to do,” Egeland comments. “What gives McGill an edge is that it has a history and connections trusted in the communities. At CINE, we have a governing board that sets the rules, there’s structure and accountability.
“At McGill, I have a cadre of researchers that I can contact who are world-class,” Egeland beams. “It would be difficult to do what we’re doing anywhere else.”