Perception, culture, and science: A framework to identify in-home heating options to improve indoor air quality in the Navajo Nation

Abstract

A 2010 study identified higher than average incidence of respiratory disease in Shiprock, NM, the largest city in the Navajo Nation. That study suggested that the potential cause was the combustion of solid fuels in in-home heating stoves and that respiratory disease could be greatly reduced by changing indoor heating behaviors and improving heating stove quality. Since the Navajo people are deeply embedded in culture and traditions that strongly influence their daily lives, a new framework was needed to identify feasible heating alternatives that could reduce the negative environmental and health impacts related to solid fuel use while respecting the culture of the Navajo people. The resulting Navajo framework included perception, cultural, and technical assessments to evaluate seven heating alternatives perceived viable by Navajo stakeholders. Cultural experts at the Diné Policy Institute identified potential cultural limitations and motivating factors for each alternative. A limited technical assessment of the health benefits of these options was conducted and integrated into the process. A parallel convergent mixed-methods approach was employed to integrate qualitative and quantitative results. The results and framework developed and presented here may be useful for decision makers in communities heavily reliant on solid fuels for heat, especially Native Nations, where culture plays an important role in the success of any intervention.

Climate Change Mitigation Policies and Co-Impacts on Indigenous Health: A Scoping Review

“…Table 1 provides details of the included studies, including governmental jurisdiction, type of study, summary of any Indigenous participation or methodology, policy instrument and sector, a brief description of the policy or intervention, and an indication of positive and/or negative implications for Indigenous health. Eight studies were carried out in the USA [48,52,53,56,58,70,72,74], seven in the UK [60,68,73,75,77,78,80], three in New Zealand [57,66,67], and two each in China [47,62], India [49,61] and Mexico [50,59]. Other jurisdictions represented were Canada [69], the Dominican Republic [71], Ecuador [64], France [55], Finland [45], Greece [46], Malaysia [65], South Africa [79], Tanzania [63] and Venezuela [51].…”

“…The most common study type was modeling (n = 18), which included a range of environmental modeling methods and general equilibrium economic modeling [45,48,52,55,[59][60][61][62][65][66][67][68]72,73,[77][78][79][80]. Two studies used health impact assessment methods [46,70] and the remainder (n = 16) were empirical studies, including surveys, before/after comparisons, randomized controlled trials and case studies [47,[49][50][51]53,54,[56][57][58]63,64,69,71,[74][75][76]. Table 2 shows how the studies were distributed according to the type of policy instrument and sector.…”

Child Supervision and Burn Outcome among Admitted Patients at Major Trauma Hospitals in the Gambia

“…After the improved cookstove intervention, the control group had 35.2 per 1000 person-years compared to 18.1 per 1000 person-years in the intervention group [ 20 ]. However, other studies have shown that even where such child safety facilities exist, such as improved cookstoves, some women still prefer cooking on kitchen floors over using the improved cookstove [ 25 , 26 , 27 ].…”

Wood smoke black carbon from Indigenous traditional cultural activities in a subarctic Cree community

“…Burning wood indoors is part of the traditional cultural practices of Indigenous Peoples in North America [1,2]. Typically, wood is burned inside store-bought or homemade stoves for heating and or cooking in homes and cabins.…”