Climate change and Indigenous mental health in the Circumpolar North: A systematic review to inform clinical practice

Climate change is disproportionally impacting the Circumpolar North, with particular impacts among Indigenous populations. Environmental changes are felt in many aspects of daily life of Northern communities, including both physical and mental health. Thus, health institutions from around the Arctic must meet emerging needs, while the phenomenon remains marginal to their southern counterparts. In this systematic review, we aimed to review current scientific knowledge on the mental health impacts of climate change in Indigenous Peoples across the Circumpolar North. Seven databases were searched. Original peer-reviewed research articles were included if they addressed links between climate change and mental health in Arctic or Subarctic Indigenous Populations. After extraction, data were synthesized using thematic analysis. Of the 26 articles that met inclusion criteria, 16 focused on Canadian Inuit communities and 21 were exclusively qualitative. Being on the land was identified as a central determinant of wellbeing. Immediate impacts of climate change on mental health were felt through restricted mobility and disrupted livelihoods. Effects on mental health were further felt through changes in culture and identity, food insecurity, interpersonal stress and conflicts, and housing problems. Various ways in how communities and individuals are coping with these effects were reported. Understanding climate-related pathways of mental health risks in the Arctic is crucial to better identify vulnerable groups and to foster resilience. Clinicians can play a role in recognizing and providing support for patients affected by these disruptions. Policies sensitive to the climate–mental health relationship must be advocated for.

Fur loss syndrome and lice infestations observed on arctic foxes in central Nunavut, Canada.

As temperatures in the circumpolar north continue to warm, shifts in species distribution and the breakdown of environmental barriers for arthropods may impact the diversity and distribution of ectoparasites in Arctic ecosystems. In May 2019, fur loss over the neck and shoulders was observed on arctic foxes in a terrestrial arctic ecosystem (Karrak Lake) in central Nunavut, Canada. This was inconsistent with normal patterns of shedding winter fur and had not been observed on arctic foxes in this population over the previous 19 years of live-trapping. Operculated eggs attached to hair shafts were collected from one affected fox. Conventional PCR using universal louse primers targeting conserved regions of mitochondrial 12S and 16S rDNA confirmed that the eggs belonged to the order Phthiraptera. Sequencing results were inconclusive at the species level. Further investigation revealed a single unpublished report of an arctic fox with similar fur loss trapped on mainland Nunavut, in 1997. Adult lice collected from this fox were identified as sucking lice (potentially from the genus Linognathus). Our findings emphasize the need for further monitoring and have significant implications for trappers and wildlife management, as infestations negatively impact the pelt quality of these important furbearers.

Diving below the surface: A framework for arctic health research to support thriving communities

Aims: Historically, health research in the Arctic has focused on documenting ill-health using a narrow set of deficit-oriented epidemiologic indicators (i.e., prevalence of disease and mortality rates). While useful, this type of research does not adequately capture the breadth and complexities of community health and well-being, and fails to highlight solutions. A community’s context, strengths, and continued expressions of well-being need to guide inquiries, inform processes, and contextualize recommendations. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework developed to address the aforementioned concerns and inform community-led health and social research in the Arctic. Methods: The proposed framework is informed by our collective collaborations with circumpolar communities, and syntheses of individual and group research undertaken throughout the Circumpolar North. Our framework encourages investigation into the contextual factors that promote circumpolar communities to thrive. Results: Our framework centers on the visual imagery of an iceberg. There is a need to dive deeper than superficial indicators of health to examine individual, family, social, cultural, historical, linguistic, and environmental contexts that support communities in the Circumpolar North to thrive. A participatory community-based approach in conjunction with ongoing epidemiologic research is necessary in order to effectively support health and wellness. Conclusions: The iceberg framework is a way to conceptualize circumpolar health research and encourage investigators to both monitor epidemiologic indicators and also dive below the surface using participatory methodology to investigate contextual factors that support thriving communities.

Research, Development, and Education: Laying Foundations for Arctic and North-ern Data Centers

The global data center industry is a huge and rapidly growing sector. This growth has resulted in the development of significant data center clusters in various northern regions. Furthermore, the desire to attract new data center investments has been incorporated into regional development plans and strategies in different parts of the Circumpolar North. Although the policy-makers seem to have great expectations, they and the general public often know little about the industry, which consumes huge amounts of electricity and plays an immense role in the digitalization process that the world is experiencing. This article attempts to increase awareness, knowledge, and understanding of these matters among all relevant stakeholders by introducing data center-related research and development activities and education in the Arctic and the North, as well as research concerning the development of the data center industry in the cold, northern environment. After all, it is often argued that these particular conditions offer advantageous circumstances for the construction of environmentally friendly and sustainable data centers.

Inuit Country Food and Health during Pregnancy and Early Childhood in the Circumpolar North: A Scoping Review

Inuit communities in the Circumpolar North have experienced a nutrition transition characterized by the decreased intake of culturally important, nutrient-rich traditional food (country food), and an increased intake of market food, resulting in concerns over reduced diet quality and emerging chronic diseases. Nutrition in early life is critical for development, may influence health risks in later life, and is an important concern for Inuit community health. The goal of this scoping review was to characterize the nature, extent, and range of the published literature on Inuit country food and health in pregnancy and childhood. A search string was developed and applied to three databases, followed by title and abstract screening and full text review. Articles published between 1995 and 2019 were included, and data were extracted and summarized descriptively. The number of articles generally increased over time, despite the unequal geographic distribution of articles. The majority of the articles focused on environmental contaminants, and one-quarter described nutrient adequacy. Few articles described food security or food safety in pregnancy, and the most utilized quantitative methods. Gaps in understanding of country food use in pregnancy and early childhood highlight areas of future research to support public health policy for this population. Given the critical role of good nutrition in early life and the important contribution country food makes to diet quality for Inuit, further understanding of this interface is warranted.

Nafisa Yeasmin, Waliul Hasanat, Jan Brzozowski, and Stefan Kirchner, eds. Immigration in the Circumpolar North: Integration and Resilience (London: Routledge, 2021)

A review of the book: Nafisa Yeasmin, Waliul Hasanat, Jan Brzozowski, and Stefan Kirchner, eds. Immigration in the Circumpolar North: Integration and Resilience (London: Routledge, 2021)

Community health workers as a sustainable health care innovation

Health care delivery in the Circumpolar North is challenged by a scarcity of culturally relevant health care services, few medical providers trained in cross-cultural care, and high costs of transportation. Community health workers (CHWs) are primarily Indigenous individuals who provide on-the-ground health care and health promotion services in their own communities. The CHWs’ scope of work varies from health education to clinical care and often focuses on upstream factors that impact the public’s health. Although often overlooked and underutilized, the CHW role is an innovative approach to promoting more sustainable and culturally relevant care within health systems. Investigating and understanding the potential ways that CHW-integrated health care systems support health and wellness could allow for a clearer understanding of how to translate this approach to other regions seeking a transition to sustainability in health and wellness. Drawing on experiences with CHWs in the Circumpolar North, this article introduces a conceptual model summarizing pathways that describe how integrating CHWs supports wellness in their communities. The proposed model includes five pathways for how CHWs could support wellness: (1) the recruitment of CHWs from within a community promotes community capacity and control; (2) the CHW role allows them to advocate to address structural and systemic inequalities that contribute to ill health, if CHWs are supported to organize their communities around wellness; (3) CHWs have the potential to support and empower community members; (4) CHWs have the potential to develop culturally relevant, feasible, and effective health promotion strategies; and (5) CHWs have the potential to build on community strengths. This model allows for CHW-integrated health care systems to be critically examined to both test and refine this proposed model, and support and empower community health workers as a transition to a more sustainable health care delivery system that reduces inequities and promotes health.

Telecommunication line infrastructure and the Arctic environment: past, present and future

This article concentrates on the interconnected past, present and future of telecommunications and the environment in the Arctic. It brings together discussions on the natural environment, sustainable development and connectivity in and through the Arctic and focuses on fixed-line infrastructure. This study builds on the theoretical literature on infrastructure, infrastructuring and pipeline ecologies and demonstrates how the peculiar features of the Arctic, such as coldness, snow and ice, ground frost and permafrost affect telecommunication lines, and how this infrastructure impacts the environment in which it is built. Similarly, the environmental conditions, paired with long distances, small populations and limited economic opportunities, affect the infrastructuring processes and the selection of technologies, as well as their spatial extent, quality and the speed of their expansion. While the construction of telecommunication lines supports the exploitation of natural resources in and beyond the different parts of the circumpolar North, it also plays a role in the observation and protection of the Arctic.

Industrial symbiosis as an element of sustainable development of arctic companies

Economic activity in the Arctic is playing an increasingly important role in the globalizing economy, given that such an economy is largely based on natural resources (oil, gas and minerals) as well as the long-distance transport of these resources and related goods. The Arctic seems to be one of the last opportunities to exploit vast resources, which, ironically, made it possible by the negative effects of this very exploitation in the form of global warming and the subsequent retreat of the ice cover of the circumpolar North. Thus, the Arctic has already become and will continue to be part of economic globalization. The article gives an analysis of the dynamics of the «Polar Index of the Barents region. Companies». The need to include the main elements of industrial safety in the sustainable development of the Arctic has been justified, as well as the establishment of industrial symbiotic cooperation rating based on it. Industrial symbiosis is an economically efficient and environmentally friendly solution for industry that reduces energy consumption and primary material consumption by deriving value from waste, byproducts and heat losses.