scholarly journals A Guiding Framework for Needs Assessment Evaluations to Embed Digital Tools with Indigenous Communities

Author(s):  
Jasmin Bhawra ◽  
Marisa Claire Buchan ◽  
Kelly Skinner ◽  
Duane Favel ◽  
Tarun Reddy Katapally

In community-based participatory projects, needs assessments are one of the first steps to identify priority areas. Access-related issues often pose significant barriers to participation for rural and remote communities, particularly Indigenous communities which have a complicated relationship with academia due to a history of exploitation and trauma. In order to bridge this gap, work with Indigenous communities requires consistent and meaningful engagement. The prominence of digital devices (i.e., smartphones) offers an unparalleled opportunity to ethically and equitably engage citizens across jurisdictions, particularly in remote communities. We propose a framework to guide needs assessments which embed digital tools in partnership with Indigenous communities. Guided by this framework, a needs assessment was conducted with a subarctic Métis community in Saskatchewan, Canada. This project is governed by a Citizen Scientist Advisory Council which includes Traditional Knowledge Keepers, Elders, and youth. An environmental scan of relevant programs, key informant interviews, and focus groups were conducted to systematically identify community priority areas. Given the timing of the needs assessment, the community identified the Coronavirus pandemic as a key priority area requiring digital initiatives. Recommendations for community-based needs assessments to conceptualize and implement digital infrastructure are put forward, with an emphasis on self-governance and data sovereignty.

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Berkeley A. Franz ◽  
Daniel Skinner ◽  
John W. Murphy

This article examines the theoretical basis of the community as it is evoked in health evaluation. In particular, we examine how hospitals carrying out Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs) define communities as well as the implications for these definitions for how to study and engage community problems. We present qualitative findings from a sample of Appalachian nonprofit hospitals, who we asked to describe their approach to defining the community in their most recent Internal Revenue Service–mandated CHNA. Drawing upon a theoretical debate in the history of evaluation research, the authors argue that the contemporary community cannot be circumscribed merely by geographic boundaries, nor can it be identified easily with a bounded group of clearly demarcated individuals. Instead, following the tenets of community-based health research, the authors argue for a richer, more dynamic conceptualization of the community in evaluation research in which definitions arise from community bodies themselves.


1988 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Burnaby

This article provides an overview of an assessment that TESL Canada undertook of Employment and Immigration Canada's pilot programme, the Settlement Language Training Program (198617). Ten projects in the programme in Ontario, Manitoba, and B.C. were studied. The programme was well received. Its community based delivery and the availability of babysitting and transportation supports were important to its success. Good needs assessment for outreach and curriculum proved to be critical. Special attention needs to be paid to the needs of learners with low levels of literacy. Implications for future initiatives of this type are drawn on the topics of needs assessments, decision making structures, delivery agencies, time-frames and funding levels, and programme models.


1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-80
Author(s):  
Carol Atkinson ◽  
Janice Jessen

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to document community development initiatives undertaken to address substance misuse issues in remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory (NT). This paper is describing work in progress that primarily focuses on the early stage of an evolving community development process to provide alcohol and drug services, particularly in the “treatment” domain, in remote NT communities. Treatment in this context refers to counselling and various support and caring activities, which can take place in a variety of settings, such as a residential facility, a health clinic, a women's or community drop-in centre. The context is community development as the paper explores options to address a community defined need to have effective alcohol and other drug programs available to people living in remote communities.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet E. McElhaney ◽  
Joyce Helmer ◽  
Marion CE Briggs ◽  
Melissa K Andrew ◽  
Katherine S McGilton ◽  
...  

The purpose of this paper is to provide a narrative of our experience with community-driven change using our “Developer/Adapter” research method in Northern Ontario, Canada, so it can be explored in other First Nations contexts. The goal of our currently funded research is to identify community solutions and knowledge and implement community-developed interventions to better support older Indigenous persons, especially those in rural and remote communities, to “age in place” and remain independent in the community through timely access to relevant care. Our Developer/Adapter research method was developed in response to the community-identified need for self-determination to overcome the limitations of traditional Western approaches and effectively plan and execute change in Indigenous communities. Our approach commits to supporting a self- determining voice for Indigenous people and working collaboratively to develop wholistic care interventions. We believe this approach can generate compelling data for policy and practice change in both Canada and Australia.


2002 ◽  
Vol 25 (6) ◽  
pp. 136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Miller ◽  
Robyn McDermott ◽  
Brad McCulloch ◽  
Dympna Leonard ◽  
Kerry Arabena ◽  
...  

The National Indigenous Australians Sexual Health Strategy 1996-97 to 1998-99 provided the impetus and resources to assess the health of the large population of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in rural and remote communities in northern Queensland, Australia. This paper describes the development, implementation and results of a community based screening program designed to detect and treat sexually transmissible infections and a range of non-communicable conditions and attendant risk factors. The Well Person's Health Check, conducted between March 1998 and December 2000,demonstrated a high prevalence of largely preventable health problems and initiated the development of a sustainable early detection strategy for the region.


2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy M. Mikecz

Ethnohistorians and other scholars have long noted how European colonial texts often concealed the presence and participation of indigenous peoples in New World conquests. This scholarship has examined how European sources (both texts and maps) have denied indigenous history, omitted indigenous presence, elided indigenous agency, and ignored indigenous spaces all while exaggerating their own power and importance. These works provide examples of colonial authors performing these erasures, often as a means to dispossess. What they lack, however, is a systematic means of identifying, locating, and measuring these silences in space and time. This article proposes a spatial history methodology which can make visible, as well as measurable and quantifiable the ways in which indigenous people and spaces have been erased by colonial narratives. It presents two methods for doing this. First, narrative analysis and geovisualization are used to deconstruct the imperial histories found in colonial European sources. Second it combines text with maps to tell a new (spatial) narrative of conquest. This new narrative reconstructs indigenous activity through a variety of digital maps, including ‘mood maps’, indigenous activity maps, and maps of indigenous aid. The resulting spatial narrative shows the Spanish conquest of Peru was never inevitable and was dependent on the constant aid of immense numbers of indigenous people.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 35-63
Author(s):  
Robert Agres ◽  
Adrienne Dillard ◽  
Kamuela Joseph Nui Enos ◽  
Brent Kakesako ◽  
B. Puni Kekauoha ◽  
...  

This resource paper draws lessons from a twenty-year partnership between the Native Hawaiian community of Papakōlea, the Hawai‘i Alliance for Community-Based Economic Development, and the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Hawai‘i. Key players and co-authors describe five principles for sustained partnerships: (1) building partnerships based upon community values with potential for long-term commitments; (2) privileging indigenous ways of knowing; (3) creating a culture of learning together as a co-learning community; (4) fostering reciprocity and compassion in nurturing relationships; and (5) utilizing empowering methodologies and capacity-building strategies.


Author(s):  
Daan P. van Uhm ◽  
Ana G. Grigore

AbstractThis article explores the relationship between the Emberá–Wounaan and Akha Indigenous people and organized crime groups vying for control over natural resources in the Darién Gap of East Panama and West Colombia and the Golden Triangle (the area where the borders of Laos, Myanmar (Burma), and Thailand meet), respectively. From a southern green criminological perspective, we consider how organized crime groups trading in natural resources value Indigenous knowledge. We also examine the continued victimization of Indigenous people in relation to environmental harm and the tension between Indigenous peoples’ ecocentric values and the economic incentives presented to them for exploiting nature. By looking at the history of the coloniality and the socioeconomic context of these Indigenous communities, this article generates a discussion about the social framing of the Indigenous people as both victims and offenders in the illegal trade in natural resources, particularly considering the types of relationships established with dominant criminal groups present in their ancestral lands.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shoko Aoki ◽  
Kazumasa Yamagishi ◽  
Koutatsu Maruyama ◽  
Rie Kishida ◽  
Ai Ikeda ◽  
...  

AbstractTocopherols, strong antioxidants, may be useful in preventing dementia, but the epidemiological evidence is insufficient. We performed a community-based follow-up study of Japanese, the Circulatory Risk in Community Study, involving 3739 people aged 40–64 years at baseline (1985–1999). Incident disabling dementia was followed up from 1999 through 2020. For subtype analysis, we classified disabling dementia into that with and that without a history of stroke. Dietary intake of tocopherols (total, α, β, γ, and δ) were estimated using 24-h recall surveys. During a median follow-up of 19.7 years, 670 cases of disabling dementia developed. Total tocopherol intake was inversely associated with risk of disabling dementia with multivariable hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) of 0.79 (0.63–1.00) for the highest versus lowest quartiles of total tocopherol intake (P for trend = 0.05). However, the association was strengthened when further adjusted for α-linolenic acid intake (Spearman correlation with total tocopherol intake = 0.93), with multivariable hazard ratios of 0.50 (0.34–0.74) (P for trend = 0.001) but was weakened and nonsignificant when further adjusted for linoleic acid intake (Spearman correlation with total tocopherol intake = 0.92), with multivariable hazard ratios of 0.69 (0.47–1.01) (P for trend = 0.05). Similar but nonsignificant inverse associations were observed for α-, γ-, and δ-tocopherols but not for β-tocopherol. These results were similar regardless of the presence of a history of stroke. Dietary tocopherol intake was inversely associated with risk of disabling dementia, but its independent effect was uncertain owing to a high intercorrelation of α-linolenic linoleic acids with total tocopherol intake. Even with such confounding, a diet high in tocopherols may help prevent the onset of dementia.


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