Building Capacity for Productive Indigenous Community-University Partnerships

Abstract

This paper describes capacity development as a key aspect of community-based research with Indigenous communities. University research engagement with Indigenous communities includes extensive, and often negative, historical antecedents. We discuss strategies for developing effective, egalitarian, and balanced Indigenous community-university relationships to build research capacity of these communities, and to create sustainable partnerships to improve health and wellness, and to reduce health disparities. We draw on the experience of eight investigators conducting research with indigenous communities to assess effective strategies for building and enhancing partnerships, including : 1) supporting Indigenous investigator development, 2) developing university policies and practices sensitive and responsive to Indigenous community settings and resources, and training for research, 3) developing community and scientifically acceptable research designs and practices, 4) aligning Indigenous community and university

Access and Management: Indigenous Perspectives on Genomic Data Sharing

“…3,21 As concerns emerge, Indigenous data sovereignty concepts and new Although tribes recognize the efficiencies that data sharing may offer, tribal partners noted that the current approach to data sharing as reflected in federal policy 10 12 How-Indigenous Genomic Data Sharing -Garrison et al governance models have gained traction to assert more comprehensive tribal control over data derived from Indigenous peoples and promote productive partnerships with researchers. 8,22,23 Tribal sovereignty empowers governance across tribal jurisdictions of peoples, lands, and interests, raising opportunities and challenges for tribal oversight of research and governance of data. 24 With the emergence of large, national cohorts and studies -such as the All of Us precision medicine cohort that aims to oversample underrepresented populations, especially AI/AN/NH peoples 25,26 -the issue of appropriate governance of stored data and biological samples takes on greater importance.…”

How Should Health Professions Schools Partner With AI/AN Communities?

“…The majority of university-tribal work has centered on research, and, unfortunately, there is a long-standing history of exploitation with sweeping negative consequences. 1,2,3,4,5 Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is changing the paradigm of "helicopter research" by drawing upon community members' skills and by more equitably distributing risks and benefits of research. Uptake of CBPR principles demonstrates a much-needed institutional makeover of tribal research engagement.…”

“…Although numerous publications share recommendations on how to conduct tribaluniversity relationships for research, 1,5,6,7 we could find none that outline how to build a responsible tribal-university educational partnership. Here we consider the 3 key principles that have fostered the program's success: (1) the development of relationships rooted in trust and equality, (2) the commitment to a rigorous educational experience, and (3) the investment of resources by the academic institution.…”

“Being Grounded in the Ancestors and Looking Forward...”—Blending Culturally Competent Research with Indigenous Leadership Styles1

“…Access to indigenous populations is becoming more and more difficult and demanding; some would argue it always has been difficult and demanding. As evident in description of the work in the supplemental issue (Gittelsohn et al 2019), researchers should be prepared to collaborate with communities, share results that have practical value, and accept the conditions imposed by the community in gaining access to information and respondents. I have termed these and additional considerations elsewhere as elements of a relational methodology (Trimble and Fisher 2005;Trimble and Mohatt 2005), and I would like to argue here that there is critical need for further development of its theory and praxis on a level of similar priority afforded that of mainstream areas of methodology such as experimental design and analytic design.…”

“…One mechanism of control and direction has involved tribal or community review of research projects. Gittelsohn et al (2019) notes tremendous variation in current approval processes for research in indigenous communities and additionally highlights specific variation that accompanies the unique challenges in garnering approval within urban indigenous contexts. While acknowledging this significant variation, in most Native American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities in the USA, there is now recognized requirement acknowledged by the research community that all researchers need to obtain some form of community review and oversight.…”