Indigenous Community Mobilization for Violence Prevention

Walking Alongside to Find the Healing Pathways: Learning Through a Community Mobilization Process in Indigenous Communities

This paper focuses on a series of cookbooks published by Indigenous Australian groups. These cookbooks are typically produced with government funding, and are developed by nutritionists, dieticians, and health workers in consultation with local communities. They are designed to teach Indigenous Australians to cook healthy, nutritious, low-cost meals. In this paper, Fredericks and Anderson identify the value of these cookbooks as low-cost, public health interventions. However, they note that their value as health interventions has not been tested. Fredericks and Anderson question the value of these cookbooks within the broader context of the health disadvantage faced by Indigenous Australians. They argue that the cookbooks are developed from a Western perspective of health and nutrition that fails to recognise the value of traditional Indigenous foodways. They suggest that incorporating more Indigenous food knowledge and food-related traditions into cookbooks may be one way of improving health among Indigenous peoples and revitalising Indigenous knowledge.

IntroductionVolunteers are an integral part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent (RCRC) Movement, with over 16 million people actively contributing to humanitarian action worldwide. Academic volunteerism within the Movement includes contributions from students, volunteers and professionals from academic institutions who offer their time and expertise. In this study we aimed to understand the process of embedding academic volunteers in humanitarian organizations such as the Canadian Red Cross (CRC) and assess the impact of their activities within the realm of public health education.MethodsWe used a qualitative case study design with an instrumental approach. All documents related to academic volunteers within the CRC database from September 2018 to August 2023 were gathered and reviewed. Data related to the processes around engaging with volunteers, timelines, outcomes and feedback surveys from students and staff members were extracted and a content analysis was conducted. A return-on-investment analysis (ROI) was conducted to assess the financial impact of engaging academic volunteers.ResultsA total of 68 academic volunteers were engaged with CRC, including unpaid or partially paid master’s students, doctoral and postdoctoral fellows, and student volunteers. The collaboration between CRC and academic volunteers contributed to educational enrichment, professional development, knowledge transfer, operational efficiency, and talent pool expansion. Results from a survey on academic volunteerism further highlighted benefits such as maintaining project schedules, promoting diversity, and amplifying the Movement’s voice on important matters. The return on investment for unpaid academic volunteers and Masters students was 70%. A five-fold increase was measured for partially paid academic volunteers resulting in 486% ROI.DiscussionAcademic volunteerism yields mutual benefits for students, academic researchers, and humanitarian organizations. These volunteers enhance operational efficiency and fortify resilience, fostering adaptability amid challenges. They play a crucial role in strengthening evidence-based programming within organizations like CRC and bolstering their capacity to address emerging health issues. These volunteers constitute a valuable talent pool, bringing organizational knowledge and experience to the table. They provide critical support for scaling up programs, especially during emergency situations, offering innovative solutions to address human resource shortages driven by funding constraints.

Responding to intersectional needs of the people/communities it serves, the Canadian Red Cross adapted its Community Health model to provide support across the continuum of care. Enhanced collaboration, integration of Indigenous Ways of Knowing, and inclusion of promising practices like social prescribing, resulted in measured impact on volunteers and participants. Background: CRC expanded its Community Health vision to provide culturally safe, trauma-informed, low-barrier access to support across the continuum of care and better address social determinants of health and health inequities. The approach is based on promising practices identified through greater collaboration among national and provincial programs, interoperability during community/climate crises, incorporation of social prescribing and community connectors, and adapting international training through a community health lens. Impact of these efforts on participant and volunteer health and well-being, sense of connection and meaning, capacity to cope and heightened healthy habits has been measured. Promising practices will be shared with the audience to apply to their own context. Audience: This workshop will engage with sectors playing a role in advancing better health and wellbeing through integrated care. We would like to engage with the following groups: government/policy influencers, health and clinical care providers, social and community care providers, researchers and academics, and recipients of care and caregivers. Approach: The workshop will engage participating groups in a collaborative overview of pan-Canadian continuum of care approach to community health programming, explore promising practices, community health tools for training and evaluation, and lessons learned. In this manner, the audience will have the opportunity to collaboratively explore and apply integrated community health approach, promising practices and tools to their own context. The following structure will be followed. Introduction of Organizational Approach (0mins): The Canadian Red Cross (CRC) will share the continuum of care approach taken to better integrate community health programming across diverse contexts, engage partnerships, identify referral pathways, and strengthen personal and community resilience. Programming highlights include pan-Canadian Friendly Calls (first national Community Health program of the CRC), Health Equipment Loan Program, Hospital-to-Home, Social Prescribing and Community Connectors, and collaboration with Indigenous Relations team. Presentation to explore Promising Practices Learnings from the model/approach (5 mins): CRC will share key learnings in the evolution of the vision and continuum of care approach to address social determinants of health and health inequities through community health programming as part of an integrated care team. Includes the expanded integration of Indigenous Relations department, development of new tools, interoperability within community/climate crises, and capacity building among CRC community health participants and personnel to strengthen resilience, improve health well-being, and better navigate the stressors and intersectional needs. Interactive Group Exercise (20 min): The audience will have the opportunity to explore the approach and tools by dividing into small groups to engage case studies and brainstorm opportunities to integrate continuum and tools across health and community care needs in their own context. Share back (0 mins): Each group will share their experience, highlight opportunities for further integration and key take-aways. Closing and final remarks (5mins): CRC will share final remarks on next steps and links to shared toolkits. Outcomes: After attending the workshop, the audience will have; - A community health model to enhance participant outcomes in addressing social determinants of health and health inequities; - Awareness of barriers experienced in integrating community health and resulting learnings; - Interactive experience with promising practices in creating accessible and integrated community health programs, and evaluating their impact. A virtual toolkit will be shared with broader NACIC24 audience based on the initial promising practices and the workshop audience experiences.

COVID-19, climate change, and communities

Each year, over 1 million Canadians participate in the Canadian Red Cross’ (CRC) Swim Program. Despite the increasing importance of cultural diversity in Canadian society, the CRC has yet to incorporate diversity training for this program’s Water Safety Instructors (WSIs). Through the use of critical Whiteness theory and critical discourse analysis, in this article, we examine the program’s content to assess the ways in which, if at all, it reflects mainstream, Eurocanadian and Whiteness discourses. Our analysis revealed two dominant discourses: (a) all participants should perceive risk and demonstrate leadership like Whites/Eurocanadians, and (b) behaviors that reflect White/Eurocanadian beliefs are normal and/or superior to other alternative ways of behaving. As a result of these findings, we suggest that future research should evaluate the possibility of implementing cultural safety training to equip instructors with a suitable understanding the cultural implications of aquatics programming, which may improve the program’s effectiveness for diverse Canadian populations.

When the Canadian Red Cross (CRCS) was created in 1896 as the first colonial branch of the British Red Cross, it held closely to the Red Cross Movement’s founding vision of inactivity in peacetime. While other national Red Cross societies expanded beyond the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, the CRCS did not – and, as a result, failed to thrive. This chapter will examine the role of the First World War in transforming the CRCS into a nationwide patriotic and humanitarian cause, its wartime work fuelled by British imperialism and an emerging sense of English-Canadian nationalism born of the war. The CRCS’s evolution between 1914 and 1919 therefore offers a useful case study of how intersecting national, imperial and transnational forces shaped the evolution of one humanitarian organisation.

The injury death rate among Aboriginal infants/children is almost four times higher than the Canadian population – Aboriginal toddlers are 15 times more likely to drown than other children. Why?...

Reindeer Gains : For centuries, the Swedish government has regulated herding and education as a way of controlling the Native Sami population

This article describes a model that maps Indigenous communities’ journeys from the cycle of violence arising from colonization to the circle of wellness through relational determinants of health. This model emerged from learning with Indigenous communities participating in research on violence prevention programming with the Canadian Red Cross. Indigenous communities have shown us that they are returning to a place of thriving by restoring relationality with land, culture, ceremony, and language. Therefore, the relational determinants of health comprise the foundational relationships that contribute to wellness. The Community Journey of Change model represents actions that communities can undertake in moving to wellness. The model has implications for policies, programs, and services for Indigenous communities as they begin to restore health and wellness.

Community mobilization has been recognized as a critical enabler for HIV prevention and is employed for challenging gender inequalities. We worked together with community partners to implement the ‘One Man Can’ intervention in rural Mpumalanga, South Africa to promote gender equality and HIV risk reduction. During the intervention, we conducted longitudinal qualitative interviews and focus group discussions with community mobilizers (n = 26), volunteer community action team members (n = 22) and community members (n = 52) to explore their experience of being part of the intervention and their experiences of change associated with the intervention. The objective of the study was to examine processes of change in community mobilization for gender equity and HIV prevention. Our analysis showed that over time, participants referred to three key elements of their engagement with the intervention: developing respect for others; inter-personal communication; and empathy. These elements were viewed as assisting them in adopting a ‘better life’ and associated with behaviour change in the intervention’s main focus areas of promoting gender equality and HIV risk reduction behaviours. We discuss how these concepts relate to the essential domains contained within our theoretical framework of community mobilization—specifically critical consciousness, shared concerns and social cohesion -, as demonstrated in this community. We interpret the focus on these key elements as significant indicators of communities engaging with the community mobilization process and initiating movement towards structural changes for HIV prevention.

A re-conceptualisation of the Batwa's right to recognition as a minority and indigenous people in Rwanda: A human rights-based approach

Reviewed by: Mobilizing Mercy: A History of the Canadian Red Cross by Sarah Glassford Sasha Mullally Sarah Glassford. Mobilizing Mercy: A History of the Canadian Red Cross. McGill-Queen’s/Associated Medical Services Studies in the History of Medicine, Health, and Society. Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2017. xx + 390 pp. $39.95 (978–0–7735–4775–9). Charitable and voluntary organizations are powerful social institutions, and many play an important role in shaping the history of health care. In Mobilizing Mercy, Sarah Glassford provides the first book-length, scholarly study of one such institution, the Canadian Red Cross Society (CRCS). Founded to provided mobile medical support for troops in the First World War, Glassford traces its evolution through war and peace over more than a half century. Over six chapters we learn how the organization filled many gaps in government aid and public health, from creating the nation’s first blood transfusion service to offering swimming lessons for Canadian youth. Moving back and forth between the organizational story and the perspective provided by influential leaders, Glassford articulately charts the social, political, and economic changes in the CRCS structure and mandate, making astute assessments of how this national organization both cultivated and deployed a Red Cross “brand” to maintain relevance. The organization continually tapped into the concerns of a wide range of key constituents across the voluntary health and social services landscape: middle-class women social reformers, education activists, clinicians in the armed forces, and government officials intent on creating a modern twentieth-century infrastructure for public health. Successful outreach meant the Canadian Red Cross Society could insert itself into many different and overlapping conversations about health, broadly defined, and authoritatively step in to influence the practical organization of services. In the interwar period, for instance, the CRCS continued to provide relief during periods of natural disaster, in the absence of regular and formal health service, and during epidemics. [End Page 711] The Second World War then refocused CRCS activities in support of the war effort, and the organization reached a high point of its status and institutional power. The activities of the largely female membership varied widely, and their history adds to our understanding of gender, work, and public life over these decades. Glassford industriously mined the local records of provincial Red Cross societies, uncovering many rich testimonials to CRCS volunteers’ work. Such records help us understand the affective and symbolic value of women’s wartime work, which underpinned the image of the Red Cross nurse that emerged and solidified at this time. Yet, the organization was engaged in a wide range of activities beyond nursing. Mobilizing Mercy is, in large part, a story of women in service work, including their struggle to carve out authoritative space in public life. Over the final years of the Second World War, the Red Cross took up the challenge of blood collection in Canada to support of the mobile hospital service units with blood serum. After the war, the CRCS continued this work, supplying the technical services to collect and distribute blood across the country to Canadian hospitals. They were so successful that, in 1959, the Red Cross began to receive substantial provincial and federal government funding to support these activities. In the two decades after war’s end, Canadian health care was increasingly underwritten by the state, including blood services. In this context, the voluntary organization attempted to fit within the emerging national system of publicly funded hospital treatment, and then physician services in private practice. The ability of the CRCS to continually reinvent itself, to negotiate its “philanthropic scope of practice,” and to adapt to new environments and public concerns, was key to its longevity. Glassford’s final chapter puts the CRCS at another crossroads, as the organization considered the challenges of reinventing itself for survival in late-twentieth-century Canada. Here, the discussion of CRCS activities and importance become more suggestive. A lack of secondary records hampered Glassford’s ability to assess the international work of the society, although she is able to describe in very broad terms the institutional framework that supported the “overseas humanitarian awakening” of the CRCS in the postwar decades (p. 244). She describes...

IntroductionAdolescent girls and young women (AGYW) in South Africa bear a disproportionate burden of HIV. Community mobilization (CM), defined as community members taking collective action to achieve a common goal related to health, equity and rights, has been associated with increased HIV testing and condom use and has been called a ‘critical enabler’ for addressing the HIV epidemic. However, limited research has examined whether CM is associated with HIV incidence among AGYW.MethodsWe examine the association of CM with incident HIV among AGYW (ages 13 to 21) enrolled in the HPTN 068 cohort in the Agincourt Health and socio‐Demographic Surveillance System, South Africa. This analysis includes 2292 participants residing in 26 villages where cross‐sectional, population‐based surveys were conducted to measure CM among 18‐ to 35‐year‐old residents in 2012 and 2014. HPTN 068 participants completed up to five annual visits that included an HIV test (2011 to 2016). Household‐level data were collected from AGYW parents/guardians and census data is updated annually. Mean village‐level CM scores were created using a validated community mobilization measure with seven components (social cohesion, social control, critical consciousness, shared concerns, organizations and networks, leadership and collective action). We used pooled generalized estimating equation regression with a Poisson distribution to estimate risk ratios (RR) for the association of village‐level CM score and CM components with incident HIV infection, accounting for village‐level clustering and adjusting for key covariates.ResultsThere were 194 incident infections over the follow‐up period. For every additional standard deviation of village‐level CM there was 12% lower HIV incidence (RR: 0.88, 95% CI: 0.79, 0.98) after adjusting for individual, household and community characteristics. CM components associated with lower HIV incidence included critical consciousness (RR: 0.88; CI: 0.79, 0.97) and leadership (RR: 0.87; CI: 0.79, 0.95); while not statistically significant, social cohesion (RR: 0.91; CI: 0.81, 1.01), shared concerns (RR: 0.90; CI: 0.81, 1.00), and organizations and networks (RR: 0.91; CI: 0.79, 1.03) may also play a protective role.ConclusionsThese results suggest that having strong community social resources will reduce AGYW's risk of HIV acquisition. Work to mobilize communities, focusing on building social cohesion, shared concerns, critical consciousness, and effective and accountable leadership, can fortify prevention programming for AGYW.

"Plumptre, Adelaide M., (Mrs H. P. Plumptre), (died 4 Sept. 1948), Vice-President, Canadian Red Cross Society, since 1939; Hon. Director, Canadian Red Cross Prisoner of War Bureau; Hon. National Commandant, Red Cross Corps" published on by Oxford University Press.