Nicole Redvers

The University of Western Ontario | UWO

The benefits of exposure to nature for human health and wellbeing have been evidenced throughout history and across global civilisations. However, research on nature and place-based interventions for human health often centres around a reactive healthcare model rather than fully considering the cultural and historical scope of holistic approaches t...

Indigenous Peoples around the globe make up approximately six percent of the global population , yet they sustainably care for around eighty percent of the world's remaining biodiversity. Despite continued political, economic, and racial marginalization, as well as some of the worst health inequities on the planet, Indigenous Peoples have worked ha...

While there has been significant recovery of the American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) population and revitalization of Indigenous knowledge systems, AI/AN physicians remain underrepresented in the United States (U.S.) physician workforce. Despite greater enrollment of underrepresented medical students between 1997 and 2017, the per capita enro...

In 1991, the Ugandan government formally established National Parks within the ancestral homelands of the Batwa Peoples. No consultation was carried out with local Batwa communities, and they were consequently forcibly evicted from their Forest home. With this, we sought to better understand the impacts of forced Land eviction through the lens of s...

Despite inherent resiliency and strengths, Indigenous Peoples in the United States and Canada have been impacted by colonialism, which has led to a loss of land, culture, and identity. Loss of land in particular has had substantial impacts on Indigenous food system practices. Indigenous food sovereignty (IFS) has been determined to be a mechanism f...

The United Nations (UN) General Assembly formally passed a resolution (A/76/L.75) “recognizing the right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment as a human right” in 2022 [2]. This resolution is similar to resolution 48/13 of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), passed in October 2021, which was said to be the first time the right to a cle...

Health professionals are increasingly called to become partners in planetary health. Using patient–planetary health (P–PH) co-benefit prescribing framing, we did a mixed methods systematic review to identify barriers and facilitators to adopting P–PH co-benefit prescribing by physicians and mapped these onto the Capability, Opportunity, Motivation,...

Background In recent years public health research has shifted to more strengths or asset-based approaches to health research but there is little understanding of what this concept means to Indigenous researchers. Therefore our purpose was to define an Indigenous strengths-based approach to health and well-being research. Methods Using Group Concep...

Indigenous Peoples and their deep knowledges offer a fundamentally important way of seeing the world and the environment. Through relationships to distinct ancestral homelands, Indigenous Peoples have developed unique ways of surviving, adapting, connecting, and relating to their respective environments. Indigenous Sacred Places themselves are conn...

The resurgence of Western psychedelic research and practice has led to increasing concerns from many Indigenous Nations regarding cultural appropriation, lack of recognition of the sacred cultural positioning of these medicines, exclusionary practices in research and praxis, and patenting of traditional medicines. Indigenous voices and leadership h...

Fuelled by the intersecting challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and profound social, economic, and environmental injustices, calls for new ways to work together for a healthy, just, and sustainable future are burgeoning. Consequently, there is a growing imperative and mandate across the higher education space for transformat...

Mounting evidence supports the connections between exposure to environment types––such as green spaces and biodiversity––and human health. However, the mechanistic links that connect biodiversity (the variety of life) and human health, plus the level of supporting evidence, are less clear. Here, we undertook a scoping review to map the links betwee...

Background There is ongoing and increasing interest in the commercialization of biospecimen-derived products from Indigenous Peoples. Discourse on benefit-sharing specifically in the context of the commercialization of Indigenous Peoples biospecimens are currently lacking. A better understanding of the potential ethical imperatives is in need of ex...

Objectives: Despite decades of continued commercial tobacco prevention and control efforts, smoking rates in Northern Plains American Indian (AI) communities within the United States continues to be remarkably high. We sought to take a microcosmic view of AI tobacco research in the Northern Plains region to identify the types of tobacco-related res...

Objectives Chokeberry, Aronia melanocarpa, consumed as a fruit and used as a traditional food by some American Indian tribes has greater levels of anthocyanin compared to cranberries and blueberries. Animal and human studies demonstrate that chokeberry juice extract (CBE) has cardioprotective, anti-diabetic, and anti-inflammatory properties. Satura...

Planetary health provides a perspective of ecological interdependence that connects the health and vitality of individuals, communities, and Earth’s natural systems. It includes the social, political, and economic ecosystems that influence both individuals and whole societies. In an era of interconnected grand challenges threatening health of all s...

Background: American Indians (AI) in North Dakota present with higher rates of advanced-stage disease for screening detectable colorectal cancers and have lower overall baseline colorectal cancer screening rates than non-AIs. We sought to identify the perceived barriers and facilitators for the engagement with colorectal cancer prevention within No...

Indigenous Peoples have resiliently weathered continued assaults on their sovereignty and rights throughout colonialism and its continuing effects. Indigenous Peoples' sovereignty has been strained by the increasing effects of global environmental change within their territories, including climate change and pollution, and by threats and imposition...

Mental health is one of the key priorities of Indigenous communities in the Canadian North. Land-based programs rooted in Indigenous knowledge and focused on building connections to one’s land and culture have been used to promote mental wellness. However, evaluation of land-based programs is an emerging field of work. In this article, we describe...

Social and political policy, human activities, and environmental change affect the ways in which microbial communities assemble and interact with people. These factors determine how different social groups are exposed to beneficial and/ or harmful microorganisms, meaning microbial exposure has an important socio-ecological justice context. Therefor...

The “Earthrise” photograph, taken on the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, became one of the most significant images of the 20th Century. It triggered a profound shift in environmental awareness and the potential for human unity—inspiring the first Earth Day in 1970. Taking inspiration from these events 50 years later, we initiated Project Earthrise at our 20...

The “Earthrise” photograph, taken on the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, became one of the most significant images of the 20th Century. It triggered a profound shift in environmental awareness and the potential for human unity—inspiring the first Earth Day in 1970. Taking inspiration from these events 50 years later, we initiated Project Earthrise at our 20...

We make the case that our potential contribution to ameliorating the climate crisis extends beyond our sector’s fractional contribution, arguing that healthcare should lead the charge towards meaningful change. Among professionals, healthcare providers are trusted voices globally lending us credibility with a very large audience including the gener...

In addition to the importance of fostering and developing measures for better health-system resilience globally from the effects of climate change, there have been increasing calls for health professionals, as well as public health and medical education systems, to become partners in climate change mitigation efforts. Direct clinical practice consi...

The Planetary Health Education Framework aims to guide the education of global citizens, practitioners, and professionals able and willing to address the complex Planetary Health challenges of our world today. The framework also seeks to inspire all peoples across the globe to create, restore, steward, and conserve healthy ecosystems for a thriving...

The Planetary Health Education Framework aims to guide the education of global citizens, practitioners, and professionals able and willing to address the complex Planetary Health challenges of our world today. The framework also seeks to inspire all peoples across the globe to create, restore, steward, and conserve healthy ecosystems for a thriving...

BACKGROUND: Uranium contamination of drinking-water sources on American Indian (AI) reservations in the United States is a largely ignored and underfunded public health crisis. With an estimated 40% of the headwaters in the western U.S. watershed, home to many AI reservation communities, being contaminated with untreated mine waste, the potential h...

The United Nations heralded 2021–2030 as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. A socio‐ecological approach to restoration has been proposed that honours the diversity in ecological landscapes and their respective cultures and peoples with the goal of repairing degraded ecosystems. Indigenous Peoples are intimately interconnected with landscapes,...

The purpose of this Consensus Statement is to provide a global, collaborative, representative and inclusive vision for educating an interprofessional healthcare workforce that can deliver sustainable healthcare and promote planetary health. It is intended to inform national and global accreditation standards, planning and action at the institutiona...

Urban Indigenous populations face significant health and social disparities across Canada. With high rates of homelessness and substance use, there are often few options for urban Indigenous Peoples to access land-based healing programs despite the increasingly known and appreciated benefits. In May 2018, the first urban land-based healing camp ope...

Indigenous Peoples associate their own laws with the laws of the natural world, which are formally known as or translated as Natural or First Law. These laws come from the Creator and the Land through our ancestral stories and therefore, they are sacred. All aspects of life and existence depend on living and following these natural First Laws. Sinc...

Background Despite the documented continued use of traditional healing methods, modalities and its associated practitioners by Indigenous groups across North America, it is presumed that widespread knowledge is elusive amongst most Western trained health professionals and systems. This despite that the approximately 7.5 million Indigenous peoples w...

The current global crises, including climate, COVID-19, and environmental change, requires global collective action at all scales. These broad socio-ecological challenges require the engagement of diverse perspectives and ways of knowing and the meaningful engagement of all generations and stages of personal and professional development. The combin...

The current global crises, including climate, COVID-19, and environmental change, requires global collective action at all scales. These broad socio-ecological challenges require the engagement of diverse perspectives and ways of knowing and the meaningful engagement of all generations and stages of personal and professional development. The combin...

A range of global environmental changes are contributing to an increasing global burden of disease. Since human health and well-being are intimately associated with the health of our planet, healthcare providers will not only be charged with caring for this expanding disease burden but will also need to become more environmentally sustainable in th...

Indigenous peoples are resilient peoples with deep traditional knowledge and scientific thought spanning millennia. Global discourse on climate change however has identified Indigenous populations as being a highly vulnerable group due to the habitation in regions undergoing rapid change, and the disproportionate burden of morbidity and mortality a...

In this commentary, we argue that Indigenous patients in the Northwest Territories (NWT) have a right to access traditional medicine and related practitioners as a part of the continuum of medical care. Indigenous people make up over half of the NWT population, spread over vast geographic areas with representation from First Nations, Inuit and Méti...

The Planetary Health movement is gaining significant traction in and around universities and organizations in North America and abroad. The Movement can be differentiated from the One Health paradigm, which recognizes that the health of people is connected to the health of animals and the environment,1 fitting into the Centers for Disease Control (...

In this commentary, we argue that Indigenous patients in the Northwest Territories (NWT) have a right to access traditional medicine and related practitioners as a part of the continuum of medical care. Indigenous people make up over half of the NWT population, spread over vast geographic areas with representation from First Nations, Inuit and Méti...

The term planetary health—denoting the interdependence between human health and place at all scales—emerged from the environmental and preventive health movements of the 1970–80s; in 1980, Friends of the Earth expanded the World Health Organization definition of health, stating: “health is a state of complete physical, mental, social and ecological...

In order to fulfill a broader vision of health and wellness, the World Health Organization (WHO) 2014–2023 strategy for global health has outlined a culturally sensitive blending of conventional biomedicine with traditional forms of healing. At the same time, scientists working in various fields—from anthropology and ecology to biology and climatol...