Capacity Building Together: Shifting Roles for Research and Implementation in Health Resilience Among American Indians in Arizona

Community engagement has become a leading framework for supporting health equity. The process of engagement includes groups working together to continually identify and erode existing inequalities to promote a justice-oriented approach to health and wellness for all. Missing from the literature is a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Health promotion practice 2021-11, Vol.22 (6), p.806-817
Main Authors: Hardy, Lisa J., shaw, kevin l., Hughes, Amy, Hulen, Elizabeth, Sanderson, Priscilla, Corrales, Candi, Pinn, Travis, Begay, R. Cruz
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
American Indians
Capacity building approach
Community health
Flexibility
Health disparities
Native North Americans
Participation
Participatory research
Partnerships
Reciprocity
Resilience
Self evaluation
Teams
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Summary:Community engagement has become a leading framework for supporting health equity. The process of engagement includes groups working together to continually identify and erode existing inequalities to promote a justice-oriented approach to health and wellness for all. Missing from the literature is a fine-grained study of processes that occur between and among project partners building the foundation for ongoing trust and reciprocity. Our project, Health Resilience among American Indians in Arizona, brought new and seasoned researchers together to collect and analyze data on healthcare provider knowledge and American Indian resilience. Four years after the conclusion of the project, central members of the team developed a postproject self-assessment to investigate lasting impacts of project participation using what we call an “Iterative Poly-knowledge Evaluation Cycle approach.” Results highlight the value of flexibility of roles and organic change within projects, the importance of a focus on strengths rather than deficits, and the identification of lasting change on project team members at all levels to build and bolster multisectoral scaffolding for partnerships for health. We present this case study to contribute to an understanding of impacts of community-engaged, Indigenous research projects on people who work together toward challenging existing systems of inequality for better community health.
ISSN:1524-8399
1552-6372
DOI:10.1177/1524839920947419