Queen's Kaleidoscope Institute

The Queen’s Kaleidoscope Institute embraces Queen’s Health Sciences’ strategy of Radical Collaboration for a Healthier World.

We are actively bringing together voices and expertise from across the university, drawing from the Health Sciences, Arts & Science, Law, Business, Engineering and Education to collabo- rate for improved health and wellbeing for all.

For us, Radical Collaboration isn’t only inter-faculty, interdisciplinary and interprofessional. Radical Collaboration raises awareness of diverse knowledge systems that have much to teach and share. It privileges community and local expertise. It relies on the stories and in- sights of people with lived experience. It breaks down the barriers of academia, moving from only a traditional Western view of research to an expansive view of knowledge.

The genesis of the Queen’s Kaleidoscope Institute was during the 2021 Queen’s Health Sciences strategic planning process. You’ll see “Institute for Global and Population Health” as an early action in the QHS strategic plan.

So why the name change? Why Queen’s Kaleidoscope Institute?

One of themes throughout early conversations was that we wanted to do things differently. We wanted to respond to our times – the pandemic and the vast inequities exposed, the on- going learning from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the call from global health scholars in low- and middle-income countries to decolonize global health.

There is growing recognition that global health’s colonial roots result in power dynamics that are problematic. There is understanding that those with the greatest expertise are often not consulted or engaged, with solutions being imposed by the “Global North”. There is a deep recognition that in Canada, there are huge gaps in health outcomes caused by the systemic problems of colonialism and racism, and that global health must include addressing health inequities locally.

In short, global health is under transformation, and we wanted a name that is future-oriented.

The concept of the Queen’s Kaleidoscope came from a dedicated working group, set up to lay the groundwork for the institute.

Think of how a kaleidoscope uses different lenses, to combine colours and light into constantly changing images.

For the institute, the metaphor of the kaleidoscope is where energy, movement and positionality of persons and systems can interact in dynamic and meaningful ways to engage with individual, structural, and social determinants of health and well-being.

Queen’s University is committed to Global Engagement. As articulated in the university strategy: As a university for the future, we will continue to strengthen Queen’s impact on a global scale: developing and implementing a comprehensive, equity-focused and integrated program of global engagement.

The Queen’s Kaleidoscope Institute will be the place where Queen’s Global Engagement in Health and Well-being is centred. It will be a place guided by the pledge by United Nations members states to leave no one behind, and seek to reach the furthest behind first. Our work will be connected visibly with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

• Produces, uncovers and unlocks innovative, world class knowledge to solve pressing, contemporary global health problems
• Engages across disciplines to include social, cultural, ethical and technological solutions, integrating intersectional per- spectives of health and well-being
• Shares and builds capacities for innovative, sustainable, and equitable knowledge use and com- munity change
• Challenges its collaborators, the Queen’s community, and other decisionmakers nationally and globally to critically examine current and historic approaches to global engagement in health and actively work to address historical wrongs and enact a more equitable and inclusive future