Cassandra J Opikokew Wajuntaha
Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy, Canada
Biography
Cassandra is currently a Ph.D. candidate studying Indigenous health and public policy at the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy in Regina, SK Canada. She is the recipient of a national Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Doctoral Research Award worth $108,000 over three years for her dissertation entitled “The Indian Solution to the Policy Problem: Developing an Indigenous Policymaking Model to Address First Nations Health Disparities". Cassandra is working with Indigenous health organizations in Saskatchewan and Hawaii to examine how self-determined Indigenous health policymaking models are more effective at improving the health of Indigenous people than Western colonial models.