Annual Meeting Recordings are now available for purchase
310946
A PhotoVoice Approach to Understand Community Context, Grow Partnerships & Trust, and Begin CBPR
Monday, November 17, 2014
Melinda Butsch Kovacic, MPH, PHD
,
Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Environmental Health, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH
Sara Stigler, MHA
,
Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH
Alexis Kidd
,
Seven Hills Neighborhood Houses Findlay Street Center, Cincinnati, OH
Angela Smith, MA
,
Ohio University, Athens, OH
Lisa Vaughn, Ph.D.
,
Department of Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center/University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH
Our NIEHS-funded epidemiological studies of environmental exposures and asthma point to strong roles for income and race. To better consider economic and neighborhood context consistent with the NIEHS’s 2012-2017 Strategic Goals, we needed access to a highly affected community that would inform and participate in our research. Our team therefore undertook a PhotoVoice project as a first step in establishing a participatory partnership and to build trust with the Findlay-Street Center, a one-stop social-service agency in Cincinnati’s high-risk West End. Located along the busy Interstate-75, residents are greatly exposed to traffic-related air pollution. By asking children to represent their community’s perspectives through photographs, PhotoVoice also enabled completion of a health needs assessment yielding both community-specific ideas and preliminary data for future research and sustainable programmatic ventures. After defining health in terms of the heart, mind, body and soul, ten 8-14 years-olds, over 14-weeks, discussed their photos using structured questioning. Five themes were observed: poor eating habits/inadequate nutrition; safety/violence; family, friends and community support; future hopes/dreams; and the environment. The resulting themes highlight a need to better educate children about how the environment affects their health and provide them knowledge/skills to prevent experiencing the long-term effects of their poor environments by implementing diet/lifestyle changes and broadly promoting health across their community. In addition, the resulting photos were used to engage other community agencies as well as multidisciplinary, yet traditionally-trained academic faculties in Medicine, Education, Allied Health, and Design in supporting future efforts involving CBPR including a “Citizen Youth Scientist” training program.
Learning Areas:
Environmental health sciences
Epidemiology
Public health or related research
Learning Objectives:
Describe a quantitative epidemiologist's first attempt targeting unhealthy environmental exposures and beginning broader CBPR using a PhotoVoice approach.
Keyword(s): Environmental Health, Community-Based Partnership & Collaboration
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the epidemiologist trained in Public Health, CBPR and Mixed Methods approaches that designed and completed the study described. I am or have been the principal investigator of multiple federally funded and institutional grants focused on the areas described, including the gift grant funding the project itself.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
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.
