PharmSci student explores factors that shape health outcomes for Indigenous Peoples

Jamie LaFleur’s PhD research will examine geographical and social factors that shape treatment of endometriosis

From being a high-performing athlete throughout her life, to studying kinesiology and community health, much of Jamie LaFleur’s education and career have focused on health. Now, she is building on her long-standing interest in the biological and social factors that influence health, particularly Indigenous Peoples’ health, as a PhD student in pharmaceutical sciences at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy. 

LaFleur, who is Rock Cree and a member of Lac La Ronge Indian Band in Saskatchewan, began thinking about pursuing health research during her bachelor’s degree at the University of Saskatchewan. 

Through her education, which started in kinesiology and ended in anthropology, she was able to participate in exchange programs and a High North Fellowship at the Arctic University of Norway.  She was exposed to different countries’ cultures, traditional practices and experiences of health, which sparked her interest in studying health and different ways of understanding health and wellbeing from Indigenous perspectives.

“I started learning more about what it means to be an Indigenous person and all the different aspects of health, not just biomedical systems...”

“I started learning more about what it means to be an Indigenous person and all the different aspects of health, not just biomedical systems,” she says. “I gained a better understanding of the blind spots what Western medicine considers to be healthy and how Indigenous experiences of health can cross cultures.” 

After finishing her honours degree in anthropology, LaFleur began working as a research assistant with Heather Foulds, associate professor in the College of Kinesiology at the University of Saskatchewan, who leads research focused on health and wellness of Indigenous Peoples. LaFleur was involved with a project that examines how Red River jigging, a traditional fast-stepping Métis dance, affects cardiovascular and metabolic health, as well as social, cultural and mental wellbeing. 

LaFleur focused on the qualitative aspects of the project, interviewing Métis participants to examine how they defined health and wellbeing through themes such as identity, culture, community and connection. That work became a book chapter that LaFleur co-authored with Foulds and co-investigator Leah Ferguson.

Working on the project also helped LaFleur to connect with her father’s Métis culture. Her father, Glenn, was a prominent member of the Métis community before he passed away last December. 

“I learned so much about my dad and his culture through that research. He attended residential school and didn’t speak much about parts of that experience for a long time,” she says. “That made the research so much more meaningful for me.”

Research project will examine endometriosis as chronic pain condition

LaFleur also completed a master’s degree in epidemiology and community health at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research examined how histories of Indigenous Peoples in tuberculosis sanitoria influenced vaccine decision-making in northern communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through interviews with community members, her research provided a better understanding of how determinants of health – such as geography – influence health decision-making. 

 “Northern communities in Saskatchewan were among the lowest in uptake of the COVID vaccine, but this isn’t just explained by geography or lack of information,” she says. “These communities understood the vaccine, but their histories with health systems are not taken into account in frameworks meant to explain health disparities.” 

LaFleur defended her thesis in the spring and started her PhD in September with Jaris Swidrovich, assistant professor at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy. Her research, affiliated with the U of T Centre for the Study of Pain, will examine how determinants of health – including geography, gendered expectations, access to care and treatment availability – as well as the structure of health systems can shape patients’ lived experiences of endometriosis pain. 

She plans to examine how certain pharmaceutical interventions for endometriosis are normalized or become the only realistic option when other, more specialized treatments are inaccessible due to geography and health system organization.

"My work will examine how the health system doesn’t just recognize and treat pain, but under some conditions, participates in producing the lived experience of pain."

“Clinical norms, referral structures, pharmaceutical pathways, geography, and beliefs of whose accounts of pain are considered credible can all shape access to care and the experience of pain over time. My work will examine how the health system doesn’t just recognize and treat pain, but under some conditions, participates in producing the lived experience of pain,” she says.

“Endometriosis is often discussed through reproductive function, fertility and gynecology, and I’m interested in pain itself as worthy of investigation, how it is sometimes normalized, and whose knowledge is treated as authoritative when patients lived knowledge of their bodies does not align neatly with biomedical measures or standard treatment pathways.”  

Though her research is not exclusively about Indigenous experiences, she will bring an Indigenous perspective to it, as she does with all her work, specifically as it relates to whose knowledge is considered authoritative and how health systems and geography structure choices. 

LaFleur was a well-established researcher and lecturer in the College of Kinesiology at the University of Saskatchewan, including teaching a course in research methodology, and she is looking forward to teaching similar courses and learning more about pharmaceutical sciences as she becomes more involved with the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy. 

“I’m excited to learn more about the work being done here because I don’t come from a pharmacy background,” she says. “I’m looking forward to being a part of a department where the faculty treats students with kindness and respect. That makes the Faculty pretty special.”