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American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities experience notable health disparities associated with substance use, including disproportionate rates of accidents/injuries, diabetes, liver disease, suicide, and substance use disorders. Effective treatments for substance use are needed to improve health equity for AI/ AN communities. However, an unfortunate history of unethical and stigmatizing research has engendered distrust and reluctance to participate in research among many Native communities. In recent years, researchers have made progress toward engaging in ethical health disparities research by using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework to work in close partnership with community members throughout the research process. In this methodological process paper, we discuss the collaborative development of a quantitative survey aimed at understanding risk and protective factors for substance use among a sample of tribal members residing on a rural AI reservation with numerous systems-level barriers to recovery and limited access to treatment. By using a CBPR approach and prioritizing trust and transparency with community partners and participants, we were able to successfully recruit our target sample and collect quality data from nearly 200 tribal members who self-identified as having a substance use problem. Strategies for enhancing buy-in and recruiting a community sample are discussed.
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As a Squash Plant Grows: Social Textures of Sparse Internet Connectivity in Rural and Tribal Communities
Researching and designing Internet infrastructure solutions in rural and tribal contexts requires reciprocal relationships between researchers and community partners. Methodologies must be meaningful amid local social textures of life. Achieving transdisciplinarity while relating research impacts to partner communities takes care work, particularly where technical capacity is scarce. The Full Circle Framework is an action research full stack development methodology that foregrounds reciprocity among researchers, communities, and sovereign Native nations as the axis for research purpose and progress. Applying the framework to deploy television white space infrastructure in sovereign Native nations in northern New Mexico reveals challenges for rural computing, including the need to design projects according to the pace of rural and tribal government workflows, cultivate care as a resource for overworked researchers and community partners, and co-create a demand for accurate government data around Internet infrastructures in Indian Country and through rural counties.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1831698
- PAR ID:
- 10377795
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction
- Volume:
- 28
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1073-0516
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 16
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3453862
