The Interior Health Authority has launched a recruitment campaign to hire 1,200 people who identify as Indigenous by 2025.
It's an effort that Brad Anderson, the corporate director of Aboriginal health for the authority, says is a step toward righting wrongs from the past.
"Historically our health authorities might have been a place of distrust and our Aboriginal partners may not have felt they received appropriate care. So having more Aboriginal people work within our facilities allows for that relationship building," Anderson said.
"Right now we collect data on our employees and we have just below four per cent ... self-identified as Aboriginal within our organization"
Interior Health currently employs 750 self-identifying Indigenous people out of a total 19,600 employees. Anderson says by adding 1,200, they will near the goal of ten per cent.
Anderson says the ultimate goal is to improve health outcomes for Indigenous patients.
"They can really relate to somebody who potentially has the same lived experience, might come from the family or the same nation, so there's an automatic connectedness there," he said.
Beyond that, Anderson says having more Indigenous employees is good for the workplace culture all around.