Regions: Inuvialuit Settlement Region, Gwich'in Settlement Area
Tags: health, social sciences, education, smoking
| Principal Investigator: | Hammond, Merryl (6) |
| Licence Number: | 14885 |
| Organization: | Consultancy for Alternative Education |
| Licensed Year(s): |
2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
|
| Issued: | Mar 16, 2011 |
| Project Team: | Debbie Dedam-Montour, Rob Collins, Tanya Greenland, Joanne Ogina |
Objective(s): To empower local Inuvialuit community members to better understand tobacco and its health and other effects.
Project Description: This research aims to empower local Inuvialuit community members to better understand tobacco and its health and other effects (e.g. high costs of tobacco affects family budgets), and to motivate them to consider quitting or reducing their use of tobacco. As well, it aims to reach young children and youth before they start smoking, and to spread the message that smoking is not “cool”. This method of training local people to co-ordinate and conduct the educational and research aspects of the work is unique to the approach of community-based participatory research (CBPR). CBPR consists essentially of collective research, education and action. There is no “research for research’s sake” and all research should be used to guide community education and/or action to improve the situation that was researched in the first place. In this project, will began by recruiting and training adult CBPR team co-ordinators in each community. They then select and help train youth CBPR team members. These local teams then assist with conducting a 4-page baseline survey, recruiting people to enter a Quit to Win Challenge, organizing educational sessions in the schools, etc. Keeping the focus on local teams and their interactions with community members is the hallmark of CBPR. In each community (Aklavik and Ulukhaktok), a local team coordinator has been trained who then works with youth to implement various phases of the project. All these people are paid for their time, and also receive the benefits of training and confidence building that involvement with the project affords. Local team coordinators are responsible for feeding back information to the communities, via posters, community gatherings, local radio shows, and sharing of project updates. The national team assists with preparation of graphs and illustrated handouts etc. to facilitate this task. In addition, press releases are sent to regional newspapers etc. when there is a major community initiative. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from March 15, 2011 to December 31, 2011.
