Circle Of Life Cancer Education: Giving Voice to American Indian and Alaska Native Communities

Abstract

The Circle Of Life (COL) was first developed in 1991 as a breast health program through a partnership between the American Cancer Society and a committee of lay and professional volunteers in Oklahoma, with representation from Oklahoma American Indian tribal communities. In 2008, The Society was awarded funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to expand and enhance COL. Since then, The Society has engaged a variety of tribal health and education leaders and Society staff to comprise a COL advisory workgroup. The workgroup's mission was to make recommendations and provide guidance in the revision of COL. Four cultural values emerged from the engagement of the workgroup: (1) the value of visual communication, (2) the value of interconnected generations, (3) the value of storytelling, and (4) the value of experiential learning. These four concepts greatly shaped the revision of the COL educational tools and resources.

Using Storytelling to Address Oral Health Knowledge in American Indian and Alaska Native Communities

“…Participants in this study also noted the value of visual aids, family dynamics that traverse generations, and experiential learning. Tailoring to community-specific cultural values has been shown to improve educational tools and interventions provided to AIAN communities ( 22 ). Large-scale studies evaluating the effectiveness of a storytelling intervention aimed at improving uptake of knowledge and translation to behavioral change would need to balance issues of intervention fidelity and community context, especially for interventions grounded in social behavioral theories.…”

Best Practices for Effective Clinical Partnerships with Indigenous Populations of North America (American Indian, Alaska Native, First Nations, Métis, and Inuit)

“…Many indigenous communities have been observed to conceptualize health as having distinctive yet complimentary domains, commonly categorized into physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual domains. 22,28,32,33 Clinicians delivering culturally tailored care are mindful of these domains and are inclusive of spiritual and emotional care as part of the clinical visit. Many tribal clinics will also include traditional healers on staff in order to address the spiritual healing components of their patient population.…”

Community Perspectives on Communicating About Precision Medicine in an Alaska Native Tribal Health Care System

“…This disposition toward direct, interpersonal communication may derive from positive experiences with Southcentral Foundation's relationship-based approach to care and the important role that narrative and interpersonal communication play in many ANAI cultures (Dillard et al, 2018). A substantial literature describes similar communication preferences across several ANAI communities and the effective use of narrative and in-person communication methods in health promotion and education efforts tailored for ANAI populations (Hodge et al, 2002;Vogel et al, 2013;Cueva et al, 2015Cueva et al, , 2016. Strategies for communicating about precision medicine in this population should employ a multichannel approach to disseminating information while focusing resources on direct methods of communication (Hiratsuka et al, 2018b;Dirks et al, 2019).…”