Objective
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women (hereafter Aboriginal) and their babies experience poor health outcomes for which smoking is a major risk factor. This paper explores Aboriginal women's perspectives on and experiences of smoking cessation, within and outside pregnancy, and their use of smoking cessation services using the COM‐B (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation as determinants of Behaviour) model to understand Aboriginal women's capabilities, opportunities, and motivation for smoking cessation.
Methods
Data came from 11 focus groups conducted in regional New South Wales, Australia, with 80 women aged between 16 and 68 years. Thematic analysis was performed following the COM‐B model.
Results
Seven themes related to capability, opportunity, motivation, and smoking cessation behaviors were identified. The themes highlighted that agency, knowledge, and self‐efficacy (as capability), a supportive social environment, and access to culturally appropriate services and resources (as opportunities), together with automatic and reflective motivations for quitting, may enable short‐ or long‐term smoking cessation.
Conclusion
Smoking cessation interventions may be more effective if the dynamics of the COM‐B factors are considered. Policy and practice changes for further enhancing regional Aboriginal women's psychological capability and supportive social environments, and making smoking cessation services culturally appropriate are warranted.
Summary
There is little attention focused on how Indigenous Australian people engage with the environment and how other ecologists can include this interdisciplinary approach into their practice. Despite many ecologists' genuine desire to work across cultural fields together, there are some notable differences between Western and Indigenous ideologies. One of these principles involves an embodied process that allows us as Indigenous people to connect, analyse, predict and measure changes in Country. This cultural tool of knowing is bounded in place‐based narratives that are sensory‐driven to filter and guide our field experiences. This article serves as an essential resource for scientists and conservationists to rethink their connections to place through immersive bodily experiences as a meaningful apparatus to increase public environmental stewardship. After all, is it not our desire to inspire ecological thinking within a public domain?
Australian Aboriginal symbols are visual forms of knowledge that express cultural intellect. Being classified by a Western interpretation of "art" devalues thousands of years of generational knowledge systems, where visual information has been respected, appreciated and valued. This article highlights how Aboriginal creativity has little concept of aesthetical value, but is a cultural display of meaning relating to Creational periods, often labelled as The Dreamings. With over 350 different Aboriginal Nations in Australia, this article focuses of the Dharug Nation, located around the northern Sydney area of New South Wales. The Dharug term for the Creational period is Gunyalungalung-traditional ritualized customary lores (laws). These symbols are permanently located within the environment on open rock surfaces, caves and markings on trees. Whilst some symbols are manmade, others are made by Creational ancestral beings and contain deep story lines of information in sacredness. Therefore, creative imagery engraved or painted on rock surfaces are forms of conscious narratives that emphasise deep insight.
The concept of the ‘shifting baseline syndrome’ has assisted researchers in understanding how expectations for the health of the environment deteriorate, despite known, often widespread, and significant impacts from human activities. The concept has been used to demonstrate that more accurate assessment of historical ecosystem decline can be achieved by balancing contemporary perceptions with other sorts of evidence, and is now widely referred to in studies assessing environmental change.
The potential of this concept as a model for examining and addressing complex and multidimensional social‐ecological interactions, however, is underexplored and current approaches have limitations.
We perceive the shifting baseline syndrome as a rare working example of a ‘connective concept’ that can work across fields of science, the humanities and others and that re‐envisioning the concept in this way would assist us to establish more complete, true and reflective environmental baselines.
Through our diverse author team, from a range of disciplines, geographies and cultural backgrounds, we identify gaps in current knowledge of the shifting baseline syndrome concept, its use and its effects, and describe several approaches that could be taken to improve investigations and capitalise on the connectivity that it fosters. This re‐envisioning could support a more informed and just way forward in addressing global environmental change.
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This interview began like other initial yarning conversations on who we are and where we belong. Yarning serves as a medium to establish and build respectful relationships, exchange stories and traditions, and preserve and pass on cultural knowledge. The following discussion is with Oliver Costello, a Bundjalung man, from the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales. Oliver was instrumental in creating the Firesticks Initiative, Firesticks Alliance and Jagun Alliance.
The purpose of this article was to review and evaluate three Australian projects with a focus on smoking cessation and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander pregnant women, funded under the Tackling Indigenous Smoking Innovation Grants Scheme, Australian Department of Health. The aim was to determine the impacts of culturally appropriate smoking cessation support for pregnant Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. To provide an equity-focused lens to the review, our team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers utilised an Australian-developed assessment tool: the 'Cultural Identity Interventions Systematic Review Proforma'. The tool was used to measure cultural approaches across a range of domains, and these were independently assessed by two reviewers, along with an assessment of the projects' smoking cessation outcomes. The results were compared to the evidence base in relation to aims, methods, results and conclusions, and consensus for scoring was reached. The review found that these Tackling Indigenous Smoking projects about pregnancy intentionally and effectively incorporated culturally based approaches that sought to work with the participants in culturally informed ways. Each project utilised existing social networks and partnerships to provide their participants with access to a range of community resources, adding value to existing programs.
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