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Abstract #158086

Felicia Schanche Hodge, DrPH¹, Mary Cadogan, DrPH, APRN, BC¹, Betty Chang, PhD¹, Kathryn Coe, PhD², and Suzanne Kotkin-Jaszi, DrPH³. (1) School of Nursing, University of California, Los Angeles, 700 Tiverton Ave, RM 5-940 Factor Bldg., Los Angeles, CA 90095-1702, 310-267-2255, fhodge@sonnet.ucla.edu, (2) University of Arizona, Cancer Center, Tucson, AZ 85724-5024, (3) Health Science Department, California State University, 2345 East San Ramon Avenue, MS M/H 30, Fresno, CA 93740-8031

Digital Storytelling provides a powerful personal voice for individuals and communities to write their own stories, narrate them and share these stories with others. “There are many different definitions of “digital storytelling”, but in general, all of the them revolve around the idea of coupling the longstanding art of telling stories with any variety of available multimedia tools, in graphics, audio, video animation and Web publishing¹ ”. This poster presentation will describe how the techniques of digital storytelling were modified for cultural appropriateness and used by a team of Native and non-Native health services researchers to help American Indian cancer patients and survivors find their personal voice and better understand their own cancer-related symptoms and their management, the barriers they experienced in care-seeking and treatment and how they were able to use their inherent individual and cultural strengths to overcome these barriers. There are three types of stories which will be described, Creation Stories, which recount the giving of life to American Indians, Origin Stories, which explain the roots or etiology of a problem or event; and Animal Stories, which utilize animal characters to personify a human trait. The researchers utilized “grounded theory”² methodology to develop culturally appropriate, valid and reliable cancer symptom inventions and measurement scales.

1. www.coe.uh.edu/digital-storytelling/introduction.htm accessed on February 1, 2007.

2. Glaser, B.G.(1968)The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitiative reseach.Weidenfelder and Nelson.

Learning Objectives:

• 1. Recognize how digital storytelling can be a powerful tool for helping American Indian cancer survivors better understand their experience with the disease and help them more effectively cope.
• 2. Articulate stories used by American Indians to understand and cope with cancer.
• 3. Apply these stories to construct valid and reliable cancer symptom intervention and measurement scales.

Keywords: Cancer, Native Americans

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No
Any institutionally-contracted trials related to this submission?

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.