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NUNAVUT - For nearly a month, 38 members from Nunavut and across Canada cruised the Northwest Passage, stopping in coastal communities along the Inuvialuit Settlement Region and Nunavut to survey Inuit about their health.

Kathy Morgan, left, performs a vision test with a three-year-old in Cambridge Bay. - photo courtesy of Stephanie McDonald

On the first leg of the Qanuippitali? Inuit Health Survey in August, the team travelled to Kugluktuk, Cambridge Bay, Gjoa Haven, Taloyoak, Kugaaruk and Resolute on the coast guard's Amundsen icebreaker to collect data on Inuit health and lifestyle.

Ooleepika Ikkidluak from Iqaluit greeted participants as they got on and off the ship.

She said Inuit knew the significance of their participation in the survey and were happy to be listened to.

"They were pretty excited," she said. "A lot of them were proud to be part of it."

Ikkidluak said results from the survey could be used as a tool for communities to access wellness and health and social service resources from the government.

"It will mean hard numbers that decision makers can use to come up with the resources needed for regions," she said.

Pauloosie Onalik from Kimmirut worked as an interviewer, presenting four questionnaires to participants during the hour-and-a-half to two-hour sessions.

He said Nunavummiut really opened up during interviews.

"The people I interviewed were really receptive to the idea," said Onalik.

Onalik gathered information on how much of the Inuit diet is composed of country food and store-bought food. He had Nunavummiut fill out a 24-hour recall questionnaire - detailing what foods and drinks participants consumed in the previous day.

As well, he presented participants with a community wellness questionnaire, asking what kinds of recreational activities they took part in. Medical examinations, like blood tests for diabetes and blood pressure tests, were also done.

Grace Egeland, lead investigator and head of the survey, said the survey will let her team generate health statistics for the whole of Nunavut.

"The information will be very powerful in demonstrating the various problem areas," she said.

Findings from the survey will be shared with participants before being released to the public.

"Each individual gets their own individual results and then we do aggregate summary results for the regions and Nunavut as a whole," said Egeland.

However, based on conversations she has had with interviewers, the high cost of food was seen as a very big problem for Nunavummiut, she said.

"Food security or insecurity keeps coming up," she said. "People can't stretch the food from dollars."

Results will be distributed to hamlets, health and wellness centres, governments and various Inuit organizations.

Land teams - which went into communities a few days before the ship arrived to recruit participants - had to cancel surveys for a few days in Tuktoyaktuk, while the ship fuelled up.

The health survey also happened to arrive in a few communities when funerals or weddings were underway. Egeland said while the team did experience some problems along the way, the 525 participants for the first leg was right on their target number.

"We got exactly what we needed," she said.

Egeland said approximately 650 Nunavummiut were expected to participate in the survey, with 1,117 Inuit being surveyed overall.

Ikkidluak said participants appreciated that surveys were conducted in Inuktitut.

"They were really happy to get the services in their own language and were impressed with the amount of Inuktitut that was still spoken by a lot of us," she said.

With the cruise portion of the survey completed, the team headed to Baker Lake last week and will travel to Labrador in October to finish their work.

The survey is also ongoing in Inuvik and Aklavik.