Doctoral Dissertation Research: Health, Wellness, and Indigenous Knowledge: A Community-Based Participatory Research Study

美国土著社区面临着重大而持久的健康挑战。在这些社区内进行的研究，除了在土著人民中引起疾病的因素外，也越来越注意促进健康的因素。然而，研究往往侧重于源自生物医学干预措施或结构的促进健康因素，而不是来自土著社区本身的因素。鉴于土著社区历来不信任生物医学，并且再次呼吁将土著知识纳入保健服务，因此有必要利用直接来自土著社区和合作的保健和保健资源。这篇博士论文的研究旨在通过检查一所土著服务学校和非营利组织的健康项目来实现这一目标，调查教职员工和学生如何理解、消费和生产健康和健康。除了培训一名研究生外，这项研究还与关注土著健康差距和主权的干预措施有关，特别是那些依赖与土著社区合作的干预措施。更直接的是，研究结果将用于通知学校健康计划的发展和维护。这是一个以社区为基础的参与式研究（CBPR）项目，这意味着研究人员和社区合作者在整个研究过程中共享知识、决策权和研究成果。这项研究合作将通过访谈和使用Photovoice来回答几个问题：(1)土著和非土著教职员工和学生如何描述和区分“健康”和“健康”的概念？(2)土著和西方知识体系的共存如何影响健康和保健的概念？(3)员工/学生如何在健康和保健工作上合作，这些合作如何影响与学校和社区健康相关的结果？学校的健康项目是这项研究的焦点，反映了身份、历史、权力和医学之间复杂的纠缠，这些纠缠塑造了教职员工、学生和周围社区的健康和健康促进。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Indigenous communities in the U.S. experience significant and enduring health challenges. Research within these communities increasingly pays attention to factors that promote health in addition to those that produce illness among Indigenous peoples. However, research often focuses on health-promoting factors that originate from biomedical interventions or structures, rather than on those that come from Indigenous communities themselves. Given the historic mistrust of biomedicine within Indigenous communities, and renewed calls for the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge within health-delivery, there is a need to engage with sources of health and wellness that come directly from Indigenous communities and collaborations. This doctoral dissertation research seeks to do so by examining the wellness programs at an Indigenous-serving school and non-profit, investigating how staff and students understand, consume, and produce health and wellness. In addition to training a graduate student, this study has relevance to interventions focused on Indigenous health disparity and sovereignty, especially those that rely on collaboration with Indigenous communities. More directly, study findings will be used to inform the development and maintenance of school wellness programs. This is a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project, meaning that the researcher and community collaborators share knowledge, decision-making power, and research products throughout the study process. This research collaboration will seek to answer several questions through interviews and the use of Photovoice: (1) How do Indigenous and non-Indigenous staff and students describe and differentiate between the concepts of ‘health’ and ‘wellness’?, (2) How does the co-existence of Indigenous and Western systems of knowledge impact conceptions of health and wellness?, (3) How do staff/students collaborate on health and wellness work, and how do these collaborations impact outcomes related to school and community health? The school’s wellness programs serve as the focal point for this research, reflecting the complex entangling of identity, history, power, and medicine that shapes the promotion of wellness and health among staff, students, and the surrounding community.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.