More Iqaluit Inuit needed for major health survey

Finding Inuit in Iqaluit to take part in Canada's largest Inuit health survey is proving to be a challenge for the research team, which is preparing to arrive in the Nunavut capital later this week.

The Nunavut Inuit Health Survey, also known as Qanuippitali? — Inuktitut for, "How about us, how are we?" — began in August with about 80 staff travelling aboard a "floating health lab" on the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen.

While stopping in communities around the territory's Kivalliq region last month, medical personnel on the ship have been holding three-hour "health visits" with randomly selected Inuit participants, who are transported to the Amundsen to fill out questionnaires and undergo medical tests for diabetes and stroke.

"It's going very well in terms of the clinic visits and the interviewing and the participation," McGill UniversityProf. Dr. Grace Egeland, the survey's principal investigator, told CBC News.

The Amundsen is scheduled to arrive in Iqaluit on Saturday and stay until Sept. 12. In advance of the ship's arrival, project workers have been going to the communities to recruit enough Inuit participants.

But Mary Wilman, one of four community workers in Iqaluit, said they've only found only 40 of the 160 participants they need from the capital city.

"The process, as it unfolded, we quickly found that perhaps we are too optimistic with that goal," Wilman said, adding that the challenge has been the number of non-Inuit families versus Inuit families in a city as large as Iqaluit.

"I think here in Iqaluit — because they are randomly selected, the houses — we had no way of knowing who's actually in those units."

Wilman said more recruiters will be added tothose already working in Iqaluit to step up recruiting efforts before the research ship arrives Saturday.

She also encouraged those who received notices from the Inuit Health Survey to respond.