Health Promot Pract
September 2020
Introduction: This article reports on the micro-, meso-, and macro-level impacts of sharing digital stories created by Indigenous youth leaders about HIV prevention activism in Canada.
Method: Eighteen participants created digital stories and hosted screenings in their own communities to foster dialogue. Data for this article are drawn from individual semistructured interviews with the youth leaders, audio-recordings of audience reflections, and research team member's field notes collected between 2012 and 2015 across Canada.
Adolescent women in the Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada, experience many sexual health challenges that are linked to a history of colonization and intergenerational effects of trauma. This study was informed by social ecological theory and explored how young women in the NWT develop sexual subjectivity within the context of contraception use and access during this time of decolonization. A total of 41 participants (aged 13 to 17 years) attended the Fostering Open eXpression among Youth (FOXY) body-mapping intervention in six NWT communities and then completed semistructured interviews.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this article, we describe and evaluate body mapping as (a) an arts-based activity within Fostering Open eXpression Among Youth (FOXY), an educational intervention targeting Northwest Territories (NWT) youth, and (b) a research data collection tool. Data included individual interviews with 41 female participants (aged 13-17 years) who attended FOXY body mapping workshops in six communities in 2013, field notes taken by the researcher during the workshops and interviews, and written reflections from seven FOXY facilitators on the body mapping process (from 2013 to 2016). Thematic analysis explored the utility of body mapping using a developmental evaluation methodology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFocusing on gender, race and colonialism, this paper foregrounds the voices of Indigenous young people, their histories of oppression, their legacies of resistance and the continuing strengths rooted in Indigenous peoples, their cultures and their communities. Exploring the relationship between gender and colonialism, the paper speaks to the lived realities of young people from Indigenous communities across Canada. Over 85 young people participated in six different Indigenous community workshops to create artistic pieces that explored the connections between HIV, individual risk and structural inequalities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Sexual pleasure and satisfaction are integral components of the human sexual experience, yet these crucial aspects of sexuality are rarely placed on sexual education agendas. The objective of this paper is to explore the ways in which various groups of Service Providers (SPs) participating in the Toronto Teen Survey (TTS) understand the role of pleasure in sexual education for youth, highlighting the challenges and benefits of teaching pleasure in diverse settings.
Methods: The TTS employed a community-based research (CBR) methodology.
Health Promot Pract
January 2010
The Toronto Teen Survey is a community-based participatory research study whose aim is to gather information on the accessibility and relevance of sexual health services for diverse groups of urban youth (13 to 17 years of age). This information will be used to develop a proactive, citywide strategy to improve sexual health outcomes for Toronto adolescents. In this article, the authors focus on the processes of collaboratively developing a survey tool with youth, academics, and community stakeholders.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this paper we use data from interviews conducted with grades 7 and 8 girls to explore connections between body-based harassment and girls' body modification practices. We discuss how the elementary health curricula fail to consider harassment and other cultural factors that influence the body modification practices and eating patterns of diverse girls. More specifically, we argue that the "healthy eating, healthy weights" approach of the grades 7 and 8 Ontario health curriculum has five limitations: (1) it sends contradictory messages; (2) it increases anxieties about body weight; (3) it ignores the multiple causes of eating problems; (4) it marginalizes issues most relevant to racialized girls; and (5) it ignores dilemmas associated with physical development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In Canada, Aboriginal people are overrepresented in the HIV epidemic and infected at a younger age than non-Aboriginal people. This paper discusses some of the ways Aboriginal youth in Toronto understand HIV/AIDS risk and the relevance of their comments for HIV prevention education. This research is part of a larger study conducted with Ontario youth through the Gendering Adolescent AIDS Prevention (GAAP) project.
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