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

Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland OH

Investigators

Abstract

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.