Sarah Fletcher

OBJECTIVES: To provide opportunities for intergenerational knowledge sharing for healthy lifestyles; to facilitate youth and Elder mentorship; and to increase the self-esteem of youth by celebrating identity, cultural practices and community connection through the creation and sharing of digital stories.

PARTICIPANTS: A youth research team (8 youth) aged 13–25, youth participants (60 core participants and 170 workshop participants) and Elders (14) from First Nations communities.

SETTING: The project was conducted with participants from several communities on Vancouver Island through on-site workshops and presentations.

INTERVENTION: Youth and Elders were invited to a 3-day digital story workshop consisting of knowledge-sharing sessions by Elders and digital story training by the youth research team. Workshop attendees returned to their communities to develop stories. The group re-convened at the university to create digital stories focused on community connections, family histories and healthy lifestyles. During the following year the research team delivered instructional sessions in communities on the digital story process.

OUTCOMES: The youth involved reported increased pride in community as well as new or enhanced relationships with Elders.

CONCLUSIONS: The digital stories method facilitated intergenerational interactions and engaged community members in creating a digital representation of healthy lifestyles. The process itself is an intervention, as it affords critical reflection on historical, cultural and spiritual ideas of health and what it means to be healthy in an Aboriginal community. It is a particularly relevant health promotion tool in First Nations communities with strong oral history traditions.


Keywords

Health promotion; community based participatory research; indigenous population group; adolescent; digital story

From September of 2011 to July of 2012 a participatory research project, carried out in partnership with the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society worked with a group of youth researchers to explore the relationship between stress, resilience and expressions of subjectivity among immigrant youth. Through interviews, focus groups and a photovoice project, the work of the research team (made up of immigrant youth and a research facilitator) focused on the diverse challenges that face immigrant youth, youth perspectives on stress and what could be done, from the perspective of the youth involved, to enhance resilience and support for immigrant youth in Victoria. The language of “participatory research with youth” is commonly invoked in research involving youth. Focused on empowerment and action to support positive social change, this research methodology has become increasingly popular. Too often, the positive intentions and potential of PR mean that the intricacies of power in...

The Navigating Multiple Worlds project, carried out in partnership with the Victoria Immigrant and Refugee Centre Society (VIRCS), worked with a group of youth researchers to explore the relationship between stress, resilience and expressions of subjectivity among immigrant youth. Moving beyond the negative conceptualizations of stress and acculturative stress that dominate the literature, this participatory endeavor gathered youth perspectives on stress and what could be done to enhance supports for immigrant youth in Victoria, BC, Canada. Historically, research has problematized immigrant youth identities. A focus on immigrant youth perspectives reveals that while many youth face challenges after immigration, they also emphasize the potential value of flexibility in self-definition, in the context of living and working in an increasingly interconnected world. Considering stress as an idiom of narrative expression rather than an index of negative experience, acknowledges its place ...

Moving  beyond  the  negative  conceptualizations  of  stress  and acculturative stress that dominate the literature, this paper will draw on  interview  and  photovoice  material  from  the  Navigating  Multiple Worlds project to explore stress as a narrative idiom, looking  at  the meanings  of  ‘stress,’  the  many  ways  that  stress  can  be  experienced and  how  it  can  influence  the  ways  of  being  in  the  world  for immigrant youth. Rather than looking at stress as something that can be  quantitatively  measured,  our  analysis  revealed  that  youth were talking  about  stress  in  a  number  of  ways.  This  paper  presents  examples  of  stress  discussed  in  terms  of  physical  reactions  and bodily  experiences,  the  spatial  and  temporal  dimensions  of  stress, and  the  importance  of  ‘everyday  stresses’  in the  lives  of  immigrant youth.    Our  participatory  process,  mixed  methods  design  and  focus on youth voices allowed us to explore stress as a narrative idiom, and  ultimately  its  use  as  an  idiom  of  resilience  as  well  as  distress.  The
potential for future research, taking an ethnographic approach to the study of stress, as a narrative tool, is highlighted.

I began my dissertation research, the ‘Navigating Multiple Worlds’ project, with a broad focus: immigrant youth and stress. My initial proposal concentrated on mental health and the increased potential for stress in the lives of immigrant youth, a framework informed by studies on cultural dissonance and trauma, which problematize immigrant youth identities and emphasize the challenges that can be part of immigration experiences. After five years, I have a very different perspective. This short article focuses on my reflections on the relationship between stress and resilience and the evolution of my ideas about this relationship over the course of my dissertation research.

RbD is dedicated to empowering/mobilizing youth as resilience innovators and transformative knowledge generators in the context of Disaster Risk Reduction. Be a part of the UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction: Share your perspectives by taking photographs and writing captions- Why is you engagement in Disaster Risk Reduction important to you? What does resilience to disasters look like/ mean to you and/or your community?

Immigrant youth face uncertainty in many aspects of their lives. Most have little control over their family’s decision to immigrate and once they arrive, many encounter challenges. The Navigating Multiple Worlds project worked with a group of youth researchers to explore the relationship between stress, resilience and expressions of subjectivity among immigrant youth.  Moving beyond the negative conceptualizations of stress and acculturative stress that dominate the literature, this research gathered youth perspectives on stress and what could be done to enhance supports for immigrant youth in Victoria. 

Through our participatory approach, the youth research team was involved in the design and implementation of interviews, focus groups and finally a photovoice exercise.  Our methodology sought to highlight narrative complexities and the fluidity of experiences, with the research team reflecting on their own experiences while gathering perspectives on stress from other immigrant youth. The benefits and challenges of working in participatory paradigms with youth and the value of arts based methods for capturing youth voices and creating ‘thinking spaces’ for community engagement are highlighted.

Historically, research has problematized immigrant youth identities.  A focus on immigrant youth perspectives reveals that while many youth face challenges after immigration, they also emphasize the value of flexibility in self-definition. The combination of our methods, participatory approach, our focus on youth voices and taking an ethnographic approach to documenting experiences of stress, contributed to the distinctiveness of our findings.  Considering stress as an idiom of narrative expression rather than an index of negative experience, acknowledges its place as part of the worldview of the participants, who use the term in multiple ways. The physicality of stress, the spatial and temporal dimensions of stress and ‘everyday stressors’ emerged from our analysis as thematic categories that describe the ways that youth experience ‘stress’.

The findings of the Navigating Multiple Worlds project speak to the value of conceptualizing stress as a narrative idiom. Over the course of our research it became apparent that youth were talking about stress in ways that allowed them to discuss and normalize negative experiences, re-framing experiences of ‘stress’ in positive terms. For many, this facilitated fluid movement from a focus on challenges to a focus on coping and resilience. Our research suggests that while conflicting expectations in the lives of immigrant youth are sources of ‘stress’ for many, they can also be understood as key ‘sites of flexibility’. The processes of negotiation that occur in these ‘sites of flexibility’, as youth use the language of stress to name challenging experiences and overcome them, contribute to the resilience of youth. Although our findings are specific to a small group of immigrant youth in Victoria, BC, considering stress as an idiom of resilience as well as distress creates opportunities to recognize and enhance the strengths of immigrant youth and the supports available to them. Recommendations from our research in terms of service provision, supports, and participatory research with youth are provided, as well as suggestions for future research in anthropology related to immigrant youth and stress.

Objective: To examine the perceptions of residents, nurses, and physicians about the effect of a regional family practice residency site on the delivery of health services in the community, as well as on the community health care providers.
Design: Interviews and focus groups were conducted.
Setting: Nanaimo, BC.
Participants :A total of 16 residents, 15 nurses, and 20 physicians involved with the family practice residency training program at the Nanaimo site.
Methods A series of semistructured interviews and focus groups was conducted. Transcripts of interviews and focus
groups were analyzed thematically by the research team.
This study illustrates that future planning for distributed medical education sites should take into account the effects of a residency training site on the community. These effects include increases in social capital and resources as well as benefits in terms of recruitment and retention of health care providers.