Search Results

Melany Cueva

“What’s the Big Deal?” Readers’ Theatre to Inform, Inspire, and Ignite Action

‘What’s the Big Deal?’ a 25-minute Readers’ Theatre script was developed with and for Alaska Native and American Indian Community Health Workers and the people in their communities to provide colorectal cancer screening information, increase comfort with talking about colorectal cancer screening, and encourage people to have recommended colorectal cancer screenings. Stories from colorectal cancer survivors, their families and care givers, medical providers, and Community Health Workers were woven into the lives of six characters who use humor and story to talk about common questions, concerns, and feelings related to colorectal cancer screening. The characters include Isaac, a man in his early 50s whose father died of colorectal cancer, his wife, Beverly who has recently turned 50 and has no family history of colorectal cancer and their two children, Rita and Freddie. Additionally, the script includes Isaac’s brother, Uncle Ward and the doctor who does the colonoscopy procedures. Readers’ Theatre is the coming together of a group of people to read aloud a written conversation. “What’s the Big Deal?” can be read as part of cancer education, school presentations, community gatherings, dinner theatre, or a radio show. Community Health Workers, community members, cancer survivors, and people of all ages interested in learning more about colorectal screening are possible participants. People of all ages can support recommended colorectal screening exams. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends men and women ages 50 to 75 have colorectal screening.

Melany Cueva

Awakening Choices: Colon Health, Our Stories

‘Awakening Choices: Colon Health, Our Stories’ is a 28-minute movie available on DVD that shares the stories of Alaska Native men and women talking about recommended colorectal cancer screening exams and wellness ways to decrease cancer risk. Yupik dolls, symbols of the old ones, guide our artistic movie journey showing us ways to keep our bodies strong and our communities healthy. Viewers can experience stories of wellness; celebrate the gift of life through the beauty of Alaska Native people’s songs, dances, and culture. We learn the importance of colorectal screening through the stories of Alaska Native people. “Inspired, motivated, comfortable, relieved, encouraged, hopeful”, words expressed in response to watching the movie. Other Alaskan viewer comments: “I felt a part of the people in the movie-same fears, same relief;” “I want to go and get colon screening now.” The movie is recommended for viewers of all ages to support community wellness. Men and women age 50 and older are especially encouraged to learn more about recommended screening exams to prevent colorectal cancer or to find colorectal cancer early when it can be best treated.
The DVD also includes a 5-minute preview of the movie and a 30-second public service announcement designed for television use.
A booklet and a 24-page activity guide with four interactive activities accompany the movie to support continued learning and community cancer education.

Cynthia Pearson

CBPR Variable Matrix: Research for improved health in academic/community partnerships

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is a collaborative approach that equitably involves partners in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each partner brings. CBPR begins with a research topic important to a community, combining knowledge construction, education, and action for social change towards improving community health. To advance community-engaged research, investigators from the Universities of New Mexico and Washington and the National Congress of American Indians Policy Research Center, in collaboration with a National Advisory Board of academic and community experts,* created a variable matrix to support a conceptual logic model of CBPR processes and outcomes. Details on the creation of this model are found in Wallerstein et al. 2008 [1].1 The variable matrix provides measurements to support the four dimensions of CBPR characteristics and relationships within each domain of the interactive CBPR model. First, contextual factors shape the nature of the research and the conditions under which partnerships can develop and be sustained. Next, group dynamics, consisting of three sub-dimensions, structural factors (i.e., collaborative agreements), individual partner characteristics, and relational dynamics (i.e., group decision-making); interact with contextual factors to co-produce the intervention and its research design. Finally, CBPR system changes and health outcomes result directly from the research. In sum, we provide items and scales from over 46 instruments representing 60% of the 40 domains in the CBPR logic model.

Fay Fletcher, PhD

Community Based Participatory Research with Indigenous People

Role models and leaders in Indigenous health research in Canada and the United States share their stories of work with First Nations and American Indian colleagues in community based research. Acknowledging the impact of history and resiliency while capturing the passion of emerging leaders in Indigenous health research, the videos provide a starting point for discussion on the roles and responsibilities of community and university partners in collaborative and community-based research. “The Partnership” video explores how Aboriginal communities are working with health researchers for the community’s benefit. Told through the eyes of Tlicho community-based researchers, “The Partnership” demonstrates that no matter what the issue, solutions always lie within the community. From the rural campus of the Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Washington to the hustle of the University of Washington in Seattle, “Bridging Worlds” takes a look at the varying roles of American Indian post-secondary students. Reflecting on their own life journeys, three students discuss how their desire to participate in making decisions that affect their communities has inspired them to engage in community-based research. Dr. Rose James discusses the potential change generated by CBPR in the interface between community partners and leaders and members of post secondary institutions.

Daniel Lopez-Cevallos

Community-Campus Partnership in Action: HE471 Program Planning at WOU

HE471 Program Planning is a Service-Learning-based course at Western Oregon University’s Community Health Education program. This course collaborates with community-based organizations to develop interventions (such as health education programs) and grant proposals. Our product (a website) has been developed to serve as a model for other community health, service-learning courses. Currently, we have six active projects and community partnerships. These projects include: supporting an orphanage in Vietnam (Forgotten People Foundation), raising Methamphetamine awareness (United Communities against Meth), building a playground for a rural school (Project Play), improving dental care for disadvantaged children (Dental HOPE), improving diet among WIC participants through community gardening (WIC/Marion-Polk Food Share), and increasing access to health and social services for farmworker families (Colonia Amistad). Two of these partnerships are highlighted in the website: the Forgotten People Foundation (FPF) and United Communities Against Meth (UCAM). This website describes the Community-Based participatory process which includes assessment, health promotion/education interventions, and program evaluation. All products developed during the course are shared with the community partners. The website highlights interventions developed by the two featured partnerships (e.g. FPF recent fundraising efforts now include supporting a public school in Bac Giang province; while UCAM is working with CASA advocates to better support foster care children).

Vaughn Edelson

Does It Run In the Family?

The Does It Run In the Family? online tool helps users create customized family health history (FHH) materials for their family, organization, or community. The tool combines family health history, oral traditions, and genetics in order to help individuals and families gather their health history and use that information to make positive health choices. The tool allows users to customize two booklets that together help people collect, organize, and understand their FHH. The first booklet, “A Guide to Family Health History”, provides basic information on FHH and why it is important, how choices can impact your health, what information to collect, and how to collect and organize it. This booklet can be customized with personal health stories, photos, quotes, interview questions, family tree information, and local resources. The second booklet, “A Guide for Understanding Genetics and Health”, explains the basics of genetics, inheritance, and health conditions that can run in the family. Users can add conditions to the tool’s library and customize risk statistics and hints for health to be more relevant to their families and communities. Users can also customize organizational information and include community-specific links. The customizable nature of the tool makes it relevant and accessible to diverse communities, however those communities may be defined.

Erin Kobetz

Flipcharts: A CBPR Approach for Cervical Cancer Prevention and Early Detection Among Haitian Women

Women in Haiti and throughout the Haitian Diaspora are disproportionately burdened by cervical cancer (1). This excess disease burden primarily reflects lack of access to cervical cancer screening, known to prevent disease onset and progression. Our Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) initiative aims to improve screening access through providing women the opportunity to self-sample for the Human Papillomavirus (HPV), the principal cause of cervical cancer. Self-sampling is increasingly recognized as an effective method for cervical cancer prevention, particularly in low-resource settings (2, 3). Members of Patnè en Aksyon (Partners in Action), a campus-community collaborative tasked to improve the health of Haitians in Little Haiti, Miami (4), guided the intervention design, which was subsequently adapted for use in Haiti in partnership with Zanmi Lasante/Partners in Health. Our intervention relies on the expertise of Community Health Workers, known as Ajan Fanm in Haitian Kreyol. The Ajan Fanm verbally deliver peer education about cervical cancer, the importance of early detection, and instruction for self-sampling while using a flipchart containing culturally salient images that reinforce key educational points. The flipchart is appropriate for use with adult Haitian women who have low literacy, both in Haiti and throughout the Diaspora, and in low-resource settings.

Christine George

Homeless Over 50: The Greying of Chicago's Homeless Population

This policy report was developed out of a 2-year collaborative study of homeless people aged 50 to 64 in Chicago between Loyola University Center for Urban Research and Learning (CURL) and the Chicago Alliance to End Homelessness (The Alliance). This study had three goals: (1) to obtain a demographic profile of people who are homeless in Chicago and are between the ages of 50 and 64; (2) to understand how the various systems designed to serve this population do and do not meet their needs; and (3) to begin to suggest a range of policy and programmatic responses to meet the needs of this population. The researchers used a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods in their analysis. Key findings of this research are: the majority of older homeless in a 2003 data set became homeless for the first time in middle age; the number of older homeless people in Chicago is likely increasing; a majority of the population are able to work but hampered from finding employment; those who are less able to work suffer from a variety of work limiting conditions, such as chronic illness; and safety net and social welfare programs largely fail this population.

Caricia Catalani

In Harmony: Reflections, Thoughts, and Hopes of Central City, New Orleans

In Harmony is a community-based participatory film produced using videovoice methodology, a health advocacy, education, and research methodology through which people get behind video cameras to research issues of concern, communicate knowledge, and advocate for change. This video was produced by the New Orleans VideoVoice Project, a community-academic-filmmaker partnership for health. Together, our partnership participated in an 18-week training and community assessment. We gathered community assessment evidence in the form of video interviews, environmental footage, and footage of community events. The community assessment identified concerns about the health impacts of the built environment in post-Katrina New Orleans, including housing, education, and employment. Partners engaged in a participatory editing process to produce this 22-minute documentary describing assessment findings. The film premiered before more than 200 city leaders and residents in New Orleans and was viewed, in thematic sections, by over 4000 people from around the world on YouTube during their first two months online. Videovoice methodology, as demonstrated by this film, may provide communities hit hard by the shock of natural disaster or by the corrosive effects of long-term social inequities with the opportunity to build the capacity to produce independent media, equitably engage in research, and advocate for change.

Elizabeth Miller

Mapping Memories

Mapping Memories, a four-year collaborative multi-media research-creation program with refugee youth explores how innovative new media techniques can be used to solicit unique artistic expression, while empowering subjects in the process. The result of our participatory projects, a media rich website, is a collaborative initiative of Montreal based educators, filmmakers, policy advocates, students, and youth to showcase personal narratives created by youth with refugee experience.

The media projects presented on the site were facilitated by principle investigator, Elizabeth Miller of Mapping Memories working in collaboration with the Canadian Council for Refugees (CCR), an umbrella organization that brings together refugee advocates from around Canada. Mapping Memories and the CCR trained youth participants with refugee experience to create digital stories using tools such as digital cartography, audio, video, and photography. These narratives were then integrated onto the website to bring a vital youth perspective to students, teachers, advocates, community organizers, health care workers, and social workers to improve understanding and services offered to youth with refugee experience.

The diverse range of stories presented on the site works to counter stereotypes and build tolerance. In addition to compelling first person narratives, the website also provides curriculum resources for educators, advocates, social workers, and researchers wanting to engage in collaborative media projects involving self expression and public advocacy. The web site is a vibrant peer platform for youth with refugee experience to share their stories with each other and to recognize they are not alone as they grapple with mental health issues connected to isolation and the range of emotions that surface as they adapt to a new life.