Jeffrey R. Masuda

Place, Culture, and the Social Amplification of Risk

This article investigates the role of culture in the social production of risks and risk communication surrounding industrial development in a region located at a rural-urban interface. A case study examined a public consultation that was undertaken to inform local residents about an eco-industrial development proposal being planned near Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The research employed the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) to examine the relationships among culture, place, and socially constructed risk. A total of 44 in-depth, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 33 landowners (farmers, acreage owners), public officials (municipal politicians, administrators), journalists, and industry representatives. Analysis revealed that risk communication occurred in relation to situated experiences of place that were based on conflicting cultural worldviews. The research shows that place is a useful component of the SARF, providing a spatial explanation for why some people amplify, and others attenuate, risks in locally contentious environmental debates.

Reaching for environmental health justice: Canadian experiences for a comprehensive research, policy and advocacy agenda in health promotion.

Spatial disparities in environmental quality and practices are contributing to rising health inequalities worldwide. To date, the field of health promotion has not contributed as significantly as it might to a systematic analysis of the physical environment as a determinant of health nor to a critique of inequitable environmental governance practices responsible for social injustice-particularly in the Canadian context. In this paper, we explore ways in which health promotion and environmental justice perspectives can be combined into an integrated movement for environmental health justice in health promotion. Drawing on Canadian experiences, we describe the historical contributions and limitations of each perspective in research, policy and particularly professional practice. We then demonstrate how recent environmental justice research in Canada is moving toward a deeper and multi-level analysis of environmental health inequalities, a development that we believe can inform a comprehensive research, policy and advocacy agenda in health promotion toward environmental health justice as a fundamental determinant of health. Lastly, we propose four key considerations for health promotion professionals to consider in advancing this movement.

Impact of Online Support for Youth With Asthma and Allergies: Pilot Study

Youth with asthma and allergies often feel isolated and different from their peers. The objective of this study was to test the impact of online social support for these youth. Three months of support was provided using weekly synchronous chat sessions. Online sessions were facilitated by trained peer mentors (older youth with asthma and/or allergies) and health professionals. Youth could also e-mail one another between chat sessions and post messages on an electronic community bulletin board. Twenty-eight adolescents across Canada participated. Social isolation and loneliness were significantly reduced. Youth reported gaining confidence and a sense of normality.

Environmental justice in the therapeutic inner city.

Vancouvers Downtown Eastside (DTES) has long been characterized as Canadas skid row within public narratives that raise concerns about communicable diseases, open drug use, survival sex work, and homelessness. This stigmatizing gaze has bolstered a deficit-oriented philosophy that emphasizes measures to mitigate these threats, ostensibly by erasing the moral and environmental depravity from the landscape. However, such measures threaten to further marginalize DTES residents by perpetuating public sentiments of fear and disgust toward the inner city. In this paper, we challenge this orientation by reporting the results of a research process in which DTES residents chronicled their impressions of the neighbourhood. Our findings reveal a paradoxical therapeutic response to environmental injustice in the inner city, one that enables societys most marginalized people to find support, solidarity, and acceptance in their everyday struggles to survive, even thrive, amidst the structural and physical violence of the urban margins.

“I Want to Meet Other Kids Like Me”: Support Needs of Children with Asthma and Allergies

Context: Asthma is the most common chronic illness of childhood and the leading cause of hospitalization in young children. Asthma negatively impacts physical health, psychosocial wellbeing, and quality of life for affected children but the psychosocial support needs of children with asthma and severe have not been studied from their point of view. Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the support and education needs and preferred interventions of allergic children with asthma and/or severe allergies. Methods: Qualitative constant comparative content analysis was used to identify major themes from semi-structured individual interviews with 20 children with asthma and allergies and 35 parents. Findings: Children expressed frustration with the limitations imposed by asthma and allergies on their regular activities and normal lives. Parents believed that peer support someone to whom their child could relate as a role model that support could improve both their children’s and their own coping. Conclusions: Parents and children preferred a combination of in-person meetings and internet support to enhance the capacity of children, reduce children’s anxiety, increase their self-care skills, and self-confidence. In addition they believed a support intervention was a stepping stone to developing a community of support for children with asthma, allergies, and anaphylaxis.

Online Solutions to Support Needs and Preferences of Parents of Children With Asthma and Allergies

Many families of children with asthma and allergies experience support deficits and isolation. However, support interventions have not been designed to meet their needs. Consequently, parents’ intervention preferences were elicited, and an online peer support group intervention was designed based on these preferences and piloted in the study described. In-depth interviews with 44 parents elicited preferences for support interventions for both children and parents. Many said they felt alone and wanted support from others in similar situations. Based on the parents’ preferences for accessible online peer support groups, a pilot online intervention was designed and implemented. Parents received information and reassurance from other parents in peer support sessions. Parents appreciated the accessibility and anonymity of the online support group. This innovative online peer support intervention, informed by parents’ preferences, could be adapted and tested in intervention trials and guide programs and practice for families affected by asthma, allergies, and other chronic conditions.

Building Capacity for Community-Based Participatory Research for Health Disparities in Canada: The Case of “Partnerships in Community Health Research”

Enthusiasm for community-based participatory research (CBPR) is increasing among health researchers and practitioners in addressing health disparities. Although there are many benefits of CBPR, such as its ability to democratize knowledge and link research to community action and social change, there are also perils that researchers can encounter that can threaten the integrity of the research and undermine relationships. Despite the increasing demand for CBPR-qualified individuals, few programs exist that are capable of facilitating in-depth and experiential training for both students and those working in communities. This article reviews the Partnerships in Community Health Research (PCHR), a training program at the University of British Columbia that between 2001 and 2009 has equipped graduate student and community-based learners with knowledge, skills, and experience to engage together more effectively using CBPR. With case studies of PCHR learner projects, this article illustrates some of the important successes and lessons learned in preparing CBPR-qualified researchers and community-based professionals in Canada.

Perceptions and experiences of environmental health risks among new mothers: a qualitative study in Ontario, Canada

There is a growing awareness and concern in contemporary societies about potential health impacts of environmental contaminants on children. Mothers are traditionally more involved than other family members in managing family health and household decisions and thus targeted by public health campaigns to minimise risks. However little is known about how new mothers perceive and experience environmental health risks to their children. In 2010, we undertook a parallel case study using qualitative, in-depth interviews with new mothers and focus groups with public health key informants in two Public Health Units in Ontario Province, Canada. We found that the concern about environmental hazards among participants ranged from having no concerns to actively incorporating prevention into daily life. Overall, there was a common perception among participants that many risks, particularly in the indoor environment, were controllable and therefore of little concern. But environmental risks that originate outside the home were viewed as less controllable and more threatening. In response to such threats, mothers invoked coping strategies such as relying on the capacity of childrens bodies to adapt. Regardless of the strategies adopted, actions (or inactions) were contingent upon active information seeking. We also found an optimistic bias in which new mothers reported that other children were at greater risk despite similar environmental circumstances. The findings suggest that risk communication experts must attend to the social and environmental contexts of risk and coping when designing strategies around risk reducing behaviours.

Right to a healthy city? Examining the relationship between urban space and health inequity by Aboriginal youth artist-activists in Winnipeg

This paper explores the relationship between place and health inequity as experienced by Aboriginal youth living in Winnipeg, Canada. Between 2010 and 2011, a team of youth (N = 8) associated with a community-based Aboriginal youth arts program undertook a participatory community mapping process in order to link their personal health geographies to their right to the city. The results demonstrated several ways in which place, mobility, and boundaries affected their health experiences and, in turn, reflected their perceptions of health inequity. The study confirms that urban spaces can produce, and are produced by, highly racialized geographies that work to socially isolate, segregate, and immobilize Aboriginal youth while concomitantly increasing their exposure to higher risks to their health and well being.

Out of our inner city backyards: re-scaling urban environmental health inequity assessment.

In this paper, we report the results of a three-year research project (2008-2011) that aimed to identify urban environmental health inequities using a photography-mediated qualitative approach adapted for comparative neighbourhood-level assessment. The project took place in Vancouver, Toronto, and Winnipeg, Canada and involved a total of 49 inner city community researchers who compared environmental health conditions in numerous neighbourhoods across each city. Using the social determinants of health as a guiding framework, community researchers observed a wide range of differences in health-influencing private and public spaces, including sanitation services, housing, parks and gardens, art displays, and community services. The comparative process enabled community researchers to articulate in five distinct ways how such observable conditions represented system level inequities. The findings inform efforts to shift environmental health intervention from constricted action within derelict urban districts to more coordinated mobilization for health equity in the city.