“We don’t separate out these things. Everything is related”: Partnerships with Indigenous Communities to Design, Implement, and Evaluate Multilevel Interventions to Reduce Health Disparities

Multilevel interventions (MLIs) are appropriate to reduce health disparities among Indigenous peoples because of their ability to address these communities’ diverse histories, dynamics, cultures, politics, and environments. Intervention science has highlighted the importance of context-sensitive MLIs in Indigenous communities that can prioritize Indigenous and local knowledge systems and emphasize the collective versus the individual. This paradigm shift away from individual-level focus interventions to community-level focus interventions underscores the need for community engagement and diverse partnerships in MLI design, implementation, and evaluation. In this paper, we discuss three case studies addressing how Indigenous partners collaborated with researchers in each stage of the design, implementation, and evaluation of MLIs to reduce health disparities impacting their communities. We highlight the following: (1) collaborations with multiple, diverse tribal partners to carry out MLIs which require iterative, consistent conversations over time; (2) inclusion of qualitative and Indigenous research methods in MLIs as a way to honor Indigenous and local knowledge systems as well as a way to understand a health disparity phenomenon in a community; and (3) relationship building, maintenance, and mutual respect among MLI partners to reconcile past research abuses, prevent extractive research practices, decolonize research processes, and generate co-created knowledge between Indigenous and academic communities

Trends in Antarctic ecological research in Latin America shown by publications in international journals

Antarctica is a highly interesting region for ecologists because of its extreme climatic conditions and the uniqueness of its species. In this article, we describe the trends in Antarctic ecological research participation by Latin American countries. In a survey of articles indexed by the ISI Web of Science, we searched under the categories “Ecology,” “Biodiversity Conservation” and “Evolutionary Biology” and found a total of 254 research articles published by Latin American countries. We classified these articles according to the country of affiliation, kingdom of the study species, level of biological organization and environment. Our main finding is that there is a steady increase in the relative contribution of Latin American countries to Antarctic ecological research. Within each category, we found that marine studies are more common than terrestrial studies. Between the different kingdoms, most studies focus on animals and most studies use a community approach. The leading countries in terms of productivity were Argentina, Chile and Brazil, with Argentina showing the highest rate of increase

Saúde Pública e Colonização da Natureza Public Health and Colonization of Nature

Este trabalho apresenta algumas questões sobre as quais o campo da Saúde Pública/Coletiva no Brasil precisa se reposicionar. Tomando por referência a concepção de biológico e social que se consolidou no campo a partir da década de 1970, discute-se a concepção de natureza e cultura que subsidiou o debate. Mostra como esse debate foi circunstanciado historicamente, por isso mesmo merecendo uma revisão, tendo em vista o contexto das sociedades modernas contemporâneas. As práticas biotecnológicas são objeto da análise na medida em que, além do seu uso intensivo pela saúde, carregam consigo as características de articular o biológico e o social num mesmo objeto, de transformar e criar seres vivos e de atuar na diversidade biológica. Este cenário coloca, à Saúde Pública/Coletiva, a imperiosa necessidade de rever seus marcos teórico-epistemológicos.<br>This paper presents some issues on which the field of Public/Collective Health in Brazil needs to reposition. Based on the design of biological and social consolidated in the field from the 1970s, it discusses the concept of nature and culture that has supported the debate. It shows how this debate has been historically positioned, so it deserves to be reviewed, given the context of contemporary modern societies. Biotechnology practices are the subject of analysis in that, in addition to their intensive use by health, hold the characteristics of joining biological and social factors in the same object, transforming and creating living beings and working in the biodiversity. This scenario requires from the Public/Collective Health the urgent need to review their theoretical and epistemological marks