Grant: Planning Grants - PA: Community-based Primary Healthcare

The activities in this proposal build on the strengths and successes of the "Digital Harvest Project" a diabetes awareness strategy where 17 Aboriginal youth created videos of their interviews with elders and community members about gathering and harvesting traditional foods and the effect of diet on health. Over the course of the project it became apparent that it was having very positive unintended consequences for the youth involved in terms of increasing community engagement, facilitating intergenerational knowledge sharing and supporting positive youth development. The innovative digital story techniques and photovoice methods used in the Digital Harvest project also built skills for youth in communication, giving presentations and thinking critically about factors that lead to success. The proposed research will build on the success of the Digital Harvest project to evaluate digital story techniques and photovoice methods and their application to health research, particularly with Aboriginal youth. Activities will include: 1.A literature review to evaluate and determine best practices in digital story techniques and photovoice methods. 2.A planning meeting with other researchers who are engaged in digital story collection and photovoice research methodologies to: disseminate and assess the findings of the evaluation research conducted on the digital harvest stories; to synthesize community members' evaluation of the stories with best practices in the literature; and to develop a research agenda and plan for a catalyst grant to impact a greater number of participants and to develop best practices and policies for prevention work in this field. 3. The planning meeting will also serve as a catalyst for further proposal development, "assisting potential teams of researchers, knowledge-users and/or partners in working together to identify research questions or emerging issues and priorities that could form the basis of a grant application."