Youth perspectives on community health in Nunavik: a community-engaged photovoice project

Abstract

Objective The overall objective of this study was to elicit understandings of community health among Inuit youth aged 12–18 in the region of Nunavik, northern Quebec, through identifying community conditions supporting health from their perspective and exploring how they conceptualize a healthy community. Methods In January and February 2020, 51 secondary students from three communities participated in a 1-week participatory photovoice activity during regular class time. Youth participated in three different sessions dedicated to the ethics of taking photographs, taking photos in the community, and group discussions of photographs. Discussions were analyzed via thematic analysis and validated with the youth in the fall of 2020. Results Twelve key community conditions supporting health were identified: family, food, culture, language, sense of community belonging, land, housing, services, community, connection, caring and somewhere to go. The youth understood a healthy community to be a place where “nothing was broken” and where community conditions supporting health could be visualized like the rocks in an inuksuk, a stone cairn used by Inuit for wayfinding on the tundra landscape. Participants chose the human form of inuksuk which has become widespread in northern and southern Canadian popular culture. Conclusion Findings from this study serve to confirm and strengthen existing models of Inuit health while also raising fresh perspectives and concepts relevant to the younger generation. Images and words of the youth identified in this study may be important in designing effective health promotion strategies that are accessible and relevant to younger generations, thus responding to an important research, programmatic and policy gap.

Online photovoice to engage indigenous Cook Islands youth in the exploration of social and ecological wellbeing amidst a global disruption

“…For example, Paris and Winn (2013) demonstrate that indigenous youth in Canada under the age of 18 are often excluded from traditional health survey methods. Pawlowski et al (2022) suggest that while culture and language are considered critical components of wellbeing for elders in indigenous communities, little is known about how these determinants compare to the world of video games, social media and memes, which uniquely characterize the life of young people. On a similar note, Ramey et al (2019) argue that the images and words indigenous youth use to communicate and understand health and wellbeing are rarely explored and documented.…”

“…Hence, while there appears to be a growing understanding of how indigenous populations perceive wellbeing as a deeply relational and multifaceted concept, the perspective of indigenous youth is largely absent from these local traditional representations. From this position, scholars argue that in order to obtain a holistic picture of the various dimensions of wellbeing in indigenous communities, there needs to be more research that explores wellbeing from the lens of indigenous youth (Jennings and Lowe, 2013;Paris and Winn, 2013;Ramey et al, 2019;Wexler et al, 2019;Pawlowski et al, 2022).…”

Why and how is photovoice used as a decolonising method for health research with Indigenous communities in the United States and Canada? A scoping review

“…They took place in rural Canada ( n = 29), rural United States ( n = 12), urban Canada ( n = 10), or urban United States ( n = 4). Two studies did not specify the setting (Pawlowski et al, 2022; Uchima et al, 2021). Others did not name the specific location in which they had been conducted (e.g., Johnson et al, 2020; Stanley et al, 2018; Williamson et al, 2019); Williamson et al (2019), for one, omitted place names and tribal affiliations at the request of the participating community.…”

“…Studies that aimed to assess or develop a health intervention were less likely to have dissemination activities (e.g., Cueva et al, 2020; Hayhurst et al, 2015; Holliday et al, 2018), as well as those conducted during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Pawlowski et al (2022), for example, noted that dissemination activities were paused indefinitely due to the pandemic. Meaningful, collaborative partnerships between researchers, communities, participants and policymakers, such as those that authors in the present sample aimed to build, can naturally lead to follow‐up actions and policy change (Bradford et al, 2017) even if such actions are not detailed in academic articles.…”