The IPinCH Steering Committee recently met for a four-day retreat in North Saanich, BC, July 10–13, to focus on planning out the final nine months of the project. Attending the retreat were Kelly Bannister, Cathy Bell, Brian Egan, Julie Hollowell, Joe Watkins, John Welch and myself.
The main purpose of the retreat was to develop a clearer understanding of the current status of our various initiatives, and to create a list of priorities for the coming months. Another goal was to create detailed work plans and to set deadlines to complete these various initiatives, and thus bring IPinCH to a close.
There was extensive discussion of planned project outputs and legacies. One important plan in the works is transitioning the active project website into an archived website. While we will no longer actively maintain the website after the project ends, it will continue to serve as a publically accessible source for project information and resources. Some of the resources currently housed in the Knowledge Base will also be moved to the website. We also discussed tweaking our website design so that key resources (such as those for educators) are more easily accessible.
Another priority in moving forward is to complete the development of videos and publications from both the “Working Better Together” Indigenous Research Ethics conference (last February) and the forthcoming “Identity at the Interface of Biology, Genetics, and Culture” symposium and workshop (October).
We also discussed how to facilitate continued conversations within our extensive team after the project ends, and also to explore opportunities for senior team members to mentor young team members into the future.
An updated Publication Plan was prepared for the meeting, which was used to spur discussions about the various book, journal articles, and popular media publications now in development and under consideration.
The dissemination of the community-based initiatives final reports was another important topic discussed, as was the recently completed Consent Audit. The audit was designed to identify and evaluate the various “consent instruments” used during the IPinCH project, and includes a compilation of the questions or concerns that arose with these. At the retreat, the group discussed how best to communicate the important lessons IPinCH learned in the consent process, including a summary report to share with the team.
Finally, the productivity of the retreat was greatly facilitated by our Project Manager, Brian Egan, who did an outstanding job of organizing the event and helping the committee stay on track (i.e., “herding cats”), as well as contributing to the discussions. And, as always, I am indebted to the members of the Steering Committee who have dedicated their time, energy and ideas to IPinCH for so long.
We will be sharing more outcomes of the retreat in the coming months.
Photo L-R: Kelly Bannister, George Nicholas, Julie Hollowell, Joe Watkins, Catherine Bell, John Welch and Brian Egan (photo courtesy K. Bannister).
