Nunatsiaq News - Researchers plan telephone survey on environment and health but interviews limited to English or French

A research team from the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal and Ontario’s University of Waterloo wants to find out if people in Nunavut can provide clues to understanding the link between the environment and human health. And six interviewers plan to start calling 5,000 Nunavut households later this month to ask them questions as part of a nation-wide study about this issue.

But interviewers will only be able to conduct their interviews in French and English, said Susan Elliott, a medical geographer at the University of Waterloo and co-investigator of the study. That’s because of the expense involved in conducting interviews in languages other than French and English, Elliott said.

“That’s a major issue and terrible frustration for us as researchers,” she said.