20 research outputs found
Learning From the Grandmothers: Incorporating Indigenous Principles Into Qualitative Research
In this article, the author describes the process she undertook to incorporate Indigenous principles into her doctoral research about the midlife health experiences of elder Aboriginal women in Nova Scotia, Canada. By employing qual- itative methods within the context of an Indigenous worldview, she gained knowledge of and developed competence in Aboriginal health research. The emergent partnership among Aboriginal community research facilitators, participating Mi’kmaq women, and the researcher provided many opportunities for the researcher to incorporate the paradigmatic and methodological traditions of Western science and Indigenous cultures. The application of these principles to this study might provide a useful example for other health researchers who are attempting to incorporate diverse methodological principles
Taking account of context in population health intervention research: guidance for producers, users and funders of research
Population health intervention research (PHIR) seeks to develop and evaluate policies, programmes and
other types of interventions that may affect population health and health equity. Such interventions are
strongly influenced by context – taken to refer to any feature of the circumstances in which an intervention
is conceived, developed, implemented and evaluated. Understanding how interventions relate to context is
critical to understanding how they work; why they sometimes fail; whether they can be successfully
adapted, scaled up or translated from one context to another; why their impacts vary; and how far effects
observed in one context can be generalised to others.
Concerns that context has been neglected in research to develop and evaluate population health
interventions have been expressed for at least 20 years. Over this period, an increasingly comprehensive
body of guidance has been developed to help with the design, conduct, reporting and appraisal of PHIR.
References to context have become more frequent in recent years, as interest has grown in complex and
upstream interventions, systems thinking and realist approaches to evaluation, but there remains a lack of
systematic guidance for producers, users and funders of PHIR on how context should be taken into account.
This document draws together recent thinking and practical experience of addressing context within
PHIR. It provides a broad, working definition of context and explains why and how context is important to
PHIR. It identifies the dimensions of context that are likely to shape how interventions are conceptualised,
the impacts that they have and how they can be implemented, translated and scaled up. It suggests how
context should be taken into account throughout the PHIR process, from priority setting and intervention
development to the design and conduct of evaluations and reporting, synthesis and knowledge exchange.
It concludes by summarising the key messages for producers, users and funders of PHIR and suggesting
priorities for future research. The document is meant to be used alongside existing guidance for the
development, evaluation and reporting of population health interventions. We expect the guidance to
evolve over time, as practice changes in the light of the guidance and experience accumulates on useful
approaches.
The work was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (www.cihr-irsc.gc.ca) – Institute of
Population and Public Health (CIHR-IPPH) and the UK National Institute for Health Research (NIHR)
Living Conditions Create Health Inequities in Aboriginal Communities
Because of their living conditions, Aboriginal peoples tend to be more vulnerable to stress, disease, and a lack of control of their health.York's Knowledge Mobilization Unit provides services and funding for faculty, graduate students, and community organizations seeking to maximize the impact of academic research and expertise on public policy, social programming, and professional practice. It is supported by SSHRC and CIHR grants, and by the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation.
[email protected]
www.researchimpact.c