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Trauma- and violence-informed physical activity (TVIPA) is a feasible approach to improve access/engagement in physical activity for pregnant/parenting women with experiences of trauma. Through feminist participatory action research, 56 semistructured interviews were completed to understand TVIPA. Four themes were identified: (1) "I have to be on edge": Trauma and violence pervade women's lives, (2) "It should be mandatory that you feel safe": Emotional safety is essential, (3) "The opportunity to step up and be decision-makers and leaders": Choice, collaboration, and connection create safety, and (4) "It's a good start for healing," strengths-based and capacity building foster individual and community growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within Canada, community-based participatory research (CBPR) has become the dominant methodology for scholars who conduct health research with Aboriginal communities. While CBPR has become understood as a methodology that can lead to more equitable relations of power between Aboriginal community members and researchers, it is not a panacea. In this article, we examine CBPR's decolonizing potential and challenges to meeting this potential. Specifically, we argue that those who use CBPR need to recognize and expose the ways in which power inequities are perpetrated if decolonization is to result from CBPR. Further, we argue that one of the ways to meet CBPR's decolonizing potential is to utilize a postcolonial feminist approach.

Parenting education interventions and parenting programs are important for health promotion efforts among children and families; however, the majority of parenting programs are directed towards and attended by mothers. This is problematic because research has consistently demonstrated that fathers' active participation in the family can have a positive influence on mothers' well-being, children's self-esteem, success in school, and interpersonal relationships. In this paper, using an intersectional poststructuralist framework, document analysis, and Bacchi and Goodwin's "What's the problem represented to be" approach (WPR), we analyzed the program policies of 12 organizations that provide family-centred services in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. We identified the following three discourses: organizations strive to be client-centred and provide choices; organizations want to empower their participants; and women need safe place to raise their families. Our analysis revealed that fathers are absent or represented as problems in program policies, and that this has consequences for not only fathers but also mothers and children. Highlights: Dominant discourses of gender are upheld through the exclusion of fathers in program policies. The exclusion of fathers in policies produces them as either absent/problematic and can adversely affect families. Organizations uphold damaging discourses of masculinity that can undermine efforts to prioritize the needs of mothers. Changing language in policies may help family-centred organizations shift services and better support families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical activity can be a conduit for improving men's social connectedness as well as physical gains for well-being. However, marginalised men, and fathers in particular, can be challenged to engage in leisure time physical activity. This qualitative study reports how fathers, who experience complex and significant social and health inequities, conceptualise and experience barriers to physical activity. Drawing from focus groups with 17 fathers, and semi-structured interviews with seven service providers about their perspectives on men's physical activity in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES), a highly marginalised neighbourhood. A masculinities framework was used to describe and contextualise physical activity in fathers' lives. Three themes were inductively derived through the analyses: (1) 'they're busy surviving' a finding referencing the work and limits invoked by poverty wherein survival was triaged ahead of leisure time physical activity; (2) 'there is no activity centre' chronicling the lack of physical activity spaces, programmes and resources available to fathers; and (3) 'lifestyle affects our capability to exercise' a theme detailing how social isolation amplified by factors including housing and opioid crises, and being a father in a resource poor setting imposed significant barriers to physical activity. The findings support reconceptualising physical activity programmes with men who are living in marginalising conditions to address behavioural and structural health inequities in tailoring father-centred programmes and resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to examine the factors that influence fly-in and fly-out (FIFO) mental health service providers' experiences of vicarious trauma as they deliver services to communities in Inuit Nunangat through a constructivist self-development theory (CSDT) lens. Using a participatory action research methodology, we conducted eight semi-structured interviews with providers to understand their perspectives on the risk of developing vicarious trauma and potential mitigation strategies. We identified three themes through thematic analysis: 1) vicarious trauma is a risk associated with working in communities with high rates of trauma; 2) establishing individual and organizational strategies to reduce risk of vicarious trauma may improve FIFO providers' well-being and career longevity; and 3) FIFO models of care may offer protective benefits for mental health service providers against vicarious trauma. We conclude that FIFO models of care may help mental health service providers to manage the risk of vicarious trauma through reduced caseload and less time spent in community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a significant health concern for sexual minority women, there is little qualitative research investigating their experiences of childhood trauma and suicidality. In this study, we used photovoice methods and an intersectionality framework. Drawing on qualitative interviews, we inductively derived three themes (a) Traumatized and discredited, (b) Cascading marginality, estrangement, and suicidality, (c) Reconstruction and reclaiming resilience. In Traumatized and discredited, we describe the sense of abandonment flowing from childhood trauma heightened by a lack of protection and neglect on the part of parents/guardians. The lack of support to deal with childhood trauma and the layering effects of marginality characterizes the theme Cascading marginality, estrangement, and suicidality. In the third theme, we discuss strategies for reconstruction and reclaiming resilience as participants worked to overcome these challenging experiences. Our study findings offer guidance to suicide prevention counseling programs for sexual minority women and affirm actions to address health inequities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This article examines the concept and use of the term cultural safety in Canada and the United States. Design: To examine the uptake of cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity, cultural competence, and cultural safety between health organizations in Canada and the United States, we reviewed position statements/policies of health care associations. Findings: The majority of selected health associations in Canada include cultural safety within position statements or organizational policies; however, comparable U.S. organizations focused on cultural sensitivity and cultural competence. Discussion: Through the work of the Center for American Indian Resilience, we demonstrate that U.S. researchers engage with the tenets of cultural safety—despite not using the language. Conclusions: We recommend that health care providers and health researchers consider the tenets of cultural safety. Implications for Practice: To address health disparities between American Indian populations and non–American Indians, we urge the adoption of the term and tenets of cultural safety in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we employ Bacchi's (1999) What's the Problem approach to policy analysis to examine Health Canada's Aboriginal Diabetes Initiative (ADI) and the ways in which it articulates with existing federal policies that relate to three Aboriginal social determinants of health: colonialism, education, and health care. Focusing our analysis on the Aboriginal population with the highest prevalence of type 2 diabetes, First Nations, we argue that the ADI produces type 2 diabetes as a problem related to First Nations peoples' apparently poor health decision making and lifestyle choices. Such a framing of the problem ignores the ways in which current federal policies are aligned in a way that undermines attempts, like the ADI, to improve First Nations peoples' health. We argue that for rates of type 2 diabetes to decrease in First Nations communities, the federal government needs to re-align policies that affect all of the Aboriginal social determinants of health so that the startling inequities in health that exist between First Nations peoples and non-First Nations peoples, particularly those related to type 2 diabetes, can be addressed in a more effective fashion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Problem: Excessive weight gain and physical inactivity in pregnancy have been identified as risk factors for negative health outcomes for mothers and fetuses, particularly among Aboriginal women., Question: In this paper we engage with postcolonial feminist theory and critical discourse analysis to examine the question, "how do urban Aboriginal women understand pregnancy-related weight gain and physical activity.", Methods: We conducted focus groups and semi-structured interviews with 25 urban Aboriginal pregnant or postpartum women between the ages of 16 and 39 in Ottawa, Canada., Findings: Three prominent discourses emerged: Aboriginal women have different pregnancies than non-Aboriginal women because Aboriginal women gain more weight and are more likely to develop gestational diabetes; Aboriginal women feel personally responsible for and shameful about excessive weight gain; finally, Aboriginal women need culturally safe pregnancy resources., Discussion: Our results illuminate the complex and often paradoxical ways in which discourses around weight gain and physical activity are produced and taken-up by Aboriginal women and their healthcare providers., Conclusion: Based on these findings, we argue there is a lack of accessible and culturally safe resources for urban Aboriginal women, specifically concerning weight gain and physical activity in pregnancy. We recommend the development of resources that are created for/by/with Aboriginal women to better address that issues that urban Aboriginal women themselves identify as being of key importance., (Copyright © 2015 Australian College of Midwives. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)