International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Opioid-related fatalities increased exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic and show little si... more Opioid-related fatalities increased exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic and show little sign of abating. Despite decades of scientific evidence that sustained engagement with medications for opioid use disorders (MOUD) yields positive psychosocial outcomes, less than 30% of people with OUD engage in MOUD. Treatment rates are lowest for women. The aim of this project was to identify women-specific barriers and facilitators to treatment engagement, drawing from the lived experience of women in treatment. Data are provided from a parent study that used a community-partnered participatory research approach to adapt an evidence-based digital storytelling intervention for supporting continued MOUD treatment engagement. The parent study collected qualitative data between August and December 2018 from 20 women in Western Massachusetts who had received MOUD for at least 90 days. Using constructivist grounded theory, we identified major themes and selected illustrative quotations. Key ...
Background It is challenging to develop health promotion interventions created in collaboration w... more Background It is challenging to develop health promotion interventions created in collaboration with communities affected by inequities that focus beyond individual behavior change. One potential solution is interventions that use digital stories (DS). Digital storytelling (DST) is an opportunity for reflection, connection with others, and the elevation of voices often absent from daily discourse. Consequently, public health researchers and practitioners frequently employ the DST workshop process to develop messaging that promotes health and highlights concerns in partnership with historically marginalized communities. With participants’ permission, DS can reach beyond the storytellers through behavior or attitude change interventions for health promotion among communities who share the targeted health concern. Our goal was to synthesize the literature describing interventions that use DS for health promotion to identify gaps. Methods We conducted a scoping review. Our inclusion cri...
BackgroundLow/no-income Latino men are disproportionately burdened by chronic disease morbidity a... more BackgroundLow/no-income Latino men are disproportionately burdened by chronic disease morbidity and mortality, which is often compounded by persistent exposure to stress. Chronic stress is a key mediating factor in pathways linking macro-level socio-structural forces to micro-level behavioral factors with negative health outcomes. Being that Latinxs continue to be one of the fastest growing populations in the U.S., it is imperative to better understand the roots of stress pathways and explore multi-level interventions.MethodsThis study presents qualitative findings from in-depth interviews with Puerto Rican men (95%) living in Springfield, Massachusetts. We utilized the Minority Stress Model (MSM) first posited by Ilan Meyers, as a framework to understand stress and stress processes amongst Puerto Rican men. We mapped our data onto Meyers' MSM, which allowed us to find diverging themes and identify areas for expansion.ResultsAs expected, participants reported stress rooted in ex...
In this article, we briefly review neoliberal economic rationales used to inform educational refo... more In this article, we briefly review neoliberal economic rationales used to inform educational reforms, juxtaposed with the function of public education as a public good. We then introduce a new participatory visual method grounded in a human rights education approach, digital storytelling. Digital storytelling can serve triple purposes: as a data collection technique used by social researchers to critically assess participants’ experiences as they are affected by education reforms, as a collaborative method for political organizing, and as a tactic for building awareness to address these reforms. We review a digital storytelling workshop as it was carried out with graduate employees at a public university located in the Northeastern U.S. and conclude by offering implications for social research and human rights and social justice activism.
Follow this and additional works at: https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/chr_symposium Part of the ... more Follow this and additional works at: https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/chr_symposium Part of the Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Community-Based Research Commons, Community Health and Preventive Medicine Commons, Health Services Administration Commons, Health Services Research Commons, Psychiatry and Psychology Commons, Substance Abuse and Addiction Commons, Therapeutics Commons, Translational Medical Research Commons, and the Women's Health Commons
International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2020
COVID-19 has upended community based participatory research (CBPR) projects across the United Sta... more COVID-19 has upended community based participatory research (CBPR) projects across the United States and globally. COVID-19 disproportionately impacts historically disenfranchised communities and communities of color, the very communities that CBPR is meant to engage, elevate, and support. In-person activities that help develop rapport and research protocols, build capacity, conduct collaborative data collection and analysis, disseminate findings to the community, and engage in sustainability planning are an impossible practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this article is to describe the challenges and facilitators of shifting to a virtual/online CBPR protocol with a Massachusetts community disproportionately affected by COVID19, as a means to keep them engaged in the research process and to elevate their experiences, perspectives, and voices during this critical time. We include insights about how to facilitate recruitment and compensate community members, form a co...
The nexus of migration and family offers a conjuncture to enrich understanding of teen pregnancy ... more The nexus of migration and family offers a conjuncture to enrich understanding of teen pregnancy and parenting. This article draws findings from a project centered on participant‐produced new media to reveal how young mothers negotiate reproductive health disparities. We focus on young mothers’ experiences of migration and movement, captured in local vernacular through participants’ digital story depictions and follow‐up interviews. We argue that disparities link up with the single story of teen mothering, involve public shaming, continue hand‐in‐hand with institutional humiliation, and are exacerbated through migration and movement. To disrupt the normative notions that shadow young mothers, we take seriously the young women's narratives. We theorize how the richness of stories and storytelling may serve as a potent intervention—a narrative shock—for articulating meanings and cultivating dignity for young mothers and their families, especially those who do not fit the sedentary...
African American men continue to bear a disproportionate share of the burden of disease. Engaging... more African American men continue to bear a disproportionate share of the burden of disease. Engaging these men in health research and health promotion programs-especially lower-income, African American men who are vulnerable to chronic disease conditions such as obesity and heart disease-has historically proven quite difficult for researchers and public health practitioners. The few effective outreach strategies identified in the literature to date are largely limited to recruiting through hospital clinics, churches, and barbershops. The Men of Color Health Awareness (MOCHA) project is a grassroots, community-driven initiative that has developed a number of innovative outreach strategies. After describing these strategies, we present data on the demographic and health characteristics of the population reached using these methods, which indicate that MOCHA has been highly effective in reaching this population of men.
Pregnant and parenting young women are simultaneously silenced and overrepresented by raced and c... more Pregnant and parenting young women are simultaneously silenced and overrepresented by raced and classed social narratives on adolescent childbearing in the United States. These narratives posit teen childbearing as an unequivocal social, health, and economic problem, although some scholars and policy makers construct alternative narratives that focus on inequalities and propose different perspectives on causes and consequences. Narrative inquiry that analyzes how stories are produced and utilized can enable a more nuanced approach to complex social problems. We conducted 19 individual, in-depth, and semistructured interviews with young mothers ages 16 to 21 who attend a community-based alternative education program in a low-income northeastern city. Interviews were analyzed using thematic narrative techniques. The young mothers we interviewed used a process of strategic negotiation to distance themselves from prevailing social and cultural stories about the problem of teen motherhoo...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Opioid-related fatalities increased exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic and show little si... more Opioid-related fatalities increased exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic and show little sign of abating. Despite decades of scientific evidence that sustained engagement with medications for opioid use disorders (MOUD) yields positive psychosocial outcomes, less than 30% of people with OUD engage in MOUD. Treatment rates are lowest for women. The aim of this project was to identify women-specific barriers and facilitators to treatment engagement, drawing from the lived experience of women in treatment. Data are provided from a parent study that used a community-partnered participatory research approach to adapt an evidence-based digital storytelling intervention for supporting continued MOUD treatment engagement. The parent study collected qualitative data between August and December 2018 from 20 women in Western Massachusetts who had received MOUD for at least 90 days. Using constructivist grounded theory, we identified major themes and selected illustrative quotations. Key ...
Background It is challenging to develop health promotion interventions created in collaboration w... more Background It is challenging to develop health promotion interventions created in collaboration with communities affected by inequities that focus beyond individual behavior change. One potential solution is interventions that use digital stories (DS). Digital storytelling (DST) is an opportunity for reflection, connection with others, and the elevation of voices often absent from daily discourse. Consequently, public health researchers and practitioners frequently employ the DST workshop process to develop messaging that promotes health and highlights concerns in partnership with historically marginalized communities. With participants’ permission, DS can reach beyond the storytellers through behavior or attitude change interventions for health promotion among communities who share the targeted health concern. Our goal was to synthesize the literature describing interventions that use DS for health promotion to identify gaps. Methods We conducted a scoping review. Our inclusion cri...
BackgroundLow/no-income Latino men are disproportionately burdened by chronic disease morbidity a... more BackgroundLow/no-income Latino men are disproportionately burdened by chronic disease morbidity and mortality, which is often compounded by persistent exposure to stress. Chronic stress is a key mediating factor in pathways linking macro-level socio-structural forces to micro-level behavioral factors with negative health outcomes. Being that Latinxs continue to be one of the fastest growing populations in the U.S., it is imperative to better understand the roots of stress pathways and explore multi-level interventions.MethodsThis study presents qualitative findings from in-depth interviews with Puerto Rican men (95%) living in Springfield, Massachusetts. We utilized the Minority Stress Model (MSM) first posited by Ilan Meyers, as a framework to understand stress and stress processes amongst Puerto Rican men. We mapped our data onto Meyers' MSM, which allowed us to find diverging themes and identify areas for expansion.ResultsAs expected, participants reported stress rooted in ex...
In this article, we briefly review neoliberal economic rationales used to inform educational refo... more In this article, we briefly review neoliberal economic rationales used to inform educational reforms, juxtaposed with the function of public education as a public good. We then introduce a new participatory visual method grounded in a human rights education approach, digital storytelling. Digital storytelling can serve triple purposes: as a data collection technique used by social researchers to critically assess participants’ experiences as they are affected by education reforms, as a collaborative method for political organizing, and as a tactic for building awareness to address these reforms. We review a digital storytelling workshop as it was carried out with graduate employees at a public university located in the Northeastern U.S. and conclude by offering implications for social research and human rights and social justice activism.
Follow this and additional works at: https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/chr_symposium Part of the ... more Follow this and additional works at: https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/chr_symposium Part of the Civic and Community Engagement Commons, Community-Based Research Commons, Community Health and Preventive Medicine Commons, Health Services Administration Commons, Health Services Research Commons, Psychiatry and Psychology Commons, Substance Abuse and Addiction Commons, Therapeutics Commons, Translational Medical Research Commons, and the Women's Health Commons
International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 2020
COVID-19 has upended community based participatory research (CBPR) projects across the United Sta... more COVID-19 has upended community based participatory research (CBPR) projects across the United States and globally. COVID-19 disproportionately impacts historically disenfranchised communities and communities of color, the very communities that CBPR is meant to engage, elevate, and support. In-person activities that help develop rapport and research protocols, build capacity, conduct collaborative data collection and analysis, disseminate findings to the community, and engage in sustainability planning are an impossible practice during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this article is to describe the challenges and facilitators of shifting to a virtual/online CBPR protocol with a Massachusetts community disproportionately affected by COVID19, as a means to keep them engaged in the research process and to elevate their experiences, perspectives, and voices during this critical time. We include insights about how to facilitate recruitment and compensate community members, form a co...
The nexus of migration and family offers a conjuncture to enrich understanding of teen pregnancy ... more The nexus of migration and family offers a conjuncture to enrich understanding of teen pregnancy and parenting. This article draws findings from a project centered on participant‐produced new media to reveal how young mothers negotiate reproductive health disparities. We focus on young mothers’ experiences of migration and movement, captured in local vernacular through participants’ digital story depictions and follow‐up interviews. We argue that disparities link up with the single story of teen mothering, involve public shaming, continue hand‐in‐hand with institutional humiliation, and are exacerbated through migration and movement. To disrupt the normative notions that shadow young mothers, we take seriously the young women's narratives. We theorize how the richness of stories and storytelling may serve as a potent intervention—a narrative shock—for articulating meanings and cultivating dignity for young mothers and their families, especially those who do not fit the sedentary...
African American men continue to bear a disproportionate share of the burden of disease. Engaging... more African American men continue to bear a disproportionate share of the burden of disease. Engaging these men in health research and health promotion programs-especially lower-income, African American men who are vulnerable to chronic disease conditions such as obesity and heart disease-has historically proven quite difficult for researchers and public health practitioners. The few effective outreach strategies identified in the literature to date are largely limited to recruiting through hospital clinics, churches, and barbershops. The Men of Color Health Awareness (MOCHA) project is a grassroots, community-driven initiative that has developed a number of innovative outreach strategies. After describing these strategies, we present data on the demographic and health characteristics of the population reached using these methods, which indicate that MOCHA has been highly effective in reaching this population of men.
Pregnant and parenting young women are simultaneously silenced and overrepresented by raced and c... more Pregnant and parenting young women are simultaneously silenced and overrepresented by raced and classed social narratives on adolescent childbearing in the United States. These narratives posit teen childbearing as an unequivocal social, health, and economic problem, although some scholars and policy makers construct alternative narratives that focus on inequalities and propose different perspectives on causes and consequences. Narrative inquiry that analyzes how stories are produced and utilized can enable a more nuanced approach to complex social problems. We conducted 19 individual, in-depth, and semistructured interviews with young mothers ages 16 to 21 who attend a community-based alternative education program in a low-income northeastern city. Interviews were analyzed using thematic narrative techniques. The young mothers we interviewed used a process of strategic negotiation to distance themselves from prevailing social and cultural stories about the problem of teen motherhoo...
Uploads
Papers by Aline Gubrium