Eva Marie Garroutte

Boston College | BC · Sociology Department

This essay thematizes a particular sacred story of the Anishnaabe (Ojibwe) people, relating it to two distinct “narratives”--sets of fundamental assumptions--that may be used when theorizing it. A conventional scholarly narrative is represented by the insightful writings of prominent socio-narratologist Arthur Frank. An indigenous narrative is repr...

In their influential book Writing Culture, James Clifford and George E. Marcus (1986) probed the challenges and limits of anthropological work. Rejecting the assumption that conventional research methods supplied tools for the neutral description, classification, and analysis of data drawn from the objective observation of other cultures, they argu...

More than 58 million nonsmokers in the U.S. encounter secondhand smoke that leads to tobacco-related diseases and deaths every year, making voluntary household smoking bans an important public health goal. American Indians/Alaska Natives are rarely included in research related to household smoking bans. Further, most studies dichotomize household s...

Spirituality measures often show positive associations with preferred mental health outcomes in the general population; however, research among American Indians (AIs) is limited. We examined the relationships of mental health status and two measures of spirituality – the Midlife Development Inventory (MIDI) and a tribal cultural spirituality measur...

Indigenous ancestral teachings commonly present individual and community health as dependent upon relationships between human and nonhuman worlds. But how do persons conversant with ancestral teachings effectively convey such perspectives in contemporary contexts, and to what extent does the general tribal citizenry share them? Can media technology...

Minority populations with health disparities are underrepresented in research designed to address those disparities. One way to improve minority representation is to use community-based participatory methods to overcome barriers to research participation, beginning with the informed consent process. Relevant barriers to participation include lack o...

Background: Inorganic arsenic at high and prolonged doses is highly neurotoxic. Few studies have evaluated whether long-term, low-level arsenic exposure is associated with neuropsychological functioning in adults. Objectives: To investigate the association between long-term, low-level inorganic arsenic exposure and neuropsychological functioning...

Tobacco use is the leading behavioral cause of death among adults 25 years or older. American Indian (AI) and Alaska Native (AN) communities confront some of the highest rates of tobacco use and of its sequelae. Primary care-based screening of adolescents is an integral step in the reduction of tobacco use, yet remains virtually unstudied. We exami...

The Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities program promotes multilevel and multifactorial health equity research and the building of research teams that are transdisciplinary. We summarized 5 areas of scientific training for empowering the next generation of health disparities investigators with research methods and skills that are ne...

Ethical research requires informed consent. However, complex language and lack of detail in consent materials can leave participants, especially those with low health literacy, with limited understanding of research. Racial/ethnic minorities are severely underrepresented in clinical trials, an important avenue of access to new health treatments. Th...

Cultural factors are associated with health behaviors among American Indians. Accordingly, the objective of our study was to investigate whether cultural identity, defined as the primary language spoken at home, is associated with: 1) higher total physical activity levels, and 2) levels of leisure-time physical activity recommended for health benef...

Following a previous investigation of religio-spiritual beliefs in American Indians, this article examined prevalence and correlates of religio-spiritual participation in two tribes in the Southwest and Northern Plains (N = 3,084). Analysis suggested a “religious profile” characterized by strong participation across three traditions: aboriginal, Ch...

Food insecurity is linked to obesity among some, but not all, racial and ethnic populations. We examined the prevalence of food insecurity and the association between food insecurity and obesity among American Indians (AIs) and Alaska Natives (ANs) and a comparison group of whites. Using the 2009 California Health Interview Survey, we analyzed resp...

Patients' trust in healthcare providers and institutions has been identified as a likely contributor to racial-ethnic health disparities. The likely influence of patients' cultural characteristics on trust is widely acknowledged but inadequately explored. To compare levels of patients' trust in primary care provider (interpersonal trust) with trust...

Introduction: American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) women have among the lowest rates of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening. Whether screening disparities persist with equal access to health care is unknown. Methods: Using administrative data from 1996-2007, we compared CRC screening events for 286 AI/AN and 14,042 White women aged 50 years a...

The current volume invites readers to consider whether the emerging field of Anishinaabeg Studies can center itself on stories, and what kinds of questions a field so positioned might undertake. An invigorating invitation, it raises complex issues. Scholars have contributed a considerable body of research on Native American stories. Yet such resear...

Purpose: To determine conditional risk of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in two culturally distinct American Indian reservation communities. Method: Data derived from the American Indian Service Utilization, Psychiatric Epidemiology, Risk and Protective Factors Project, a cross-sectional population-based survey that was completed between 1...

Investigate influence of ethnicity on older American Indian patients' interpretations of providers' affective behaviors. Using data from 115 older American Indian patients, random effects ordered logit models related patient ratings of providers' respect, empathy, and rapport first to separate measures of American Indian and White American ethnicit...

American Indians have one of the lowest colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates for any racial/ethnic group in the U.S., yet reasons for their low screening participation are poorly understood. We examine whether tribal language use is associated with knowledge and use of CRC screening in a community-based sample of American Indians. Using logistic...

248 Background: The objective of this study was to assess relationships between race, treatment, and cause-specific mortality for prostate cancer. Methods: The Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database yielded 328,151 prostate cancer patients diagnosed between 1990–2007 including 5,129 Japanese-American, 50,717 Black-American, and...

Colorectal cancer (CRC) rates among many American Indian populations are high. Screening by fecal occult blood test (FOBT) and endoscopy is effective for reducing CRC mortality, but little research has examined the extent of such screening in reservation populations. Further, nothing is known of how American Indians' cultural characteristics may be...

Models for community-based participatory research (CBPR) urge academic investigators to collaborate with communities to identify and pursue research questions, processes, and outcomes valuable to both partners. The tribal participatory research (TPR) conceptual model suggests modifications to CBPR to fit the special needs of American Indian communi...

Unlabelled: Substantial literature suggests that diverse biological, psychological, and sociocultural mechanisms account for differences by race and ethnicity in the experience, epidemiology, and management of pain. Many studies have examined differences between Whites and minority populations, but American Indians (AIs), Alaska Natives (ANs), and...

Perceived risk of disease plays a key role in health behaviors, making it an important issue for cancer-prevention research. We investigate associations between perceived cancer risk and selected cancer risk factors in a population-based sample of American Indians. STUDY DESIGN AND POPULATION: Data for this cross-sectional study come from a random...

Social scientific investigation into the religiospiritual characteristics of American Indians rarely includes analysis of quantitative data. After reviewing information from ethnographic and autobiographical sources, we present analyses of data from a large, population-based sample of two tribes (n = 3,084). We examine salience of belief in three t...

Cultural competence models assume that culture affects medical encounters, yet little research uses objective measures to examine how this may be true. Do providers and racial/ethnic minority patients interpret the same interactions similarly or differently? How might patterns of provider-patient concordance and discordance vary for patients with d...

The authors analyzed audiotapes from 102 patients of American Indian race (≥50 years) to explore how ethnic identity influences medical communication. A standardized interaction analysis system was used to classify patient utterances into categories: information-giving, questions, social talk, positive talk, negative talk. The authors identified pa...

The authors analyzed audiotapes from 102 patients of American Indian race (>= 50 years) to explore how ethnic identity), influences medical communication. A standardized interaction analysis system was used to classify patient utterances into categories: information-giving, questions, social talk, positive talk, negative talk. The authors identifie...

Differences in provider-patient health perceptions have been associated with poor patient outcomes, but little is known about how patients' cultural identities may be related to discordant perceptions. To examine whether health care providers and American-Indian patients disagreed on patient health status ratings, and how differences related to the...

In their influential book Writing Culture, James Clifford and George E. Marcus (1986) probed the challenges and limits of anthropological work. Rejecting the assumption that conventional research methods supplied tools for the neutral description, classification, and analysis of data drawn from the objective observation of other cultures, they argu...

Work in the field of culturally competent medical care draws on studies showing that minority Americans often report lower satisfaction with care than White Americans and recommends that providers should adapt care to patients' cultural needs. However, empirical evidence in support of cultural competence models is limited by reliance upon measureme...

To illustrate successful strategies in working with American Indian (AI) and Alaska Native (AN) communities in aging and health research by emphasizing access, local relevance, and decision-making processes. Case examples of health studies involving older AIs (greater than or equal to 50 years) among Eastern Band Cherokee Indians, a federally recog...

Objective: To illustrate successful strategies in working with American Indian (AI) and Alaska Native (AN) communities in aging and health research by emphasizing access, local relevance, and decision-making processes. Methods: Case examples of health studies involving older AIs (≥50 years) among Eastern Band Cherokee Indi-ans, a federally recogniz...

Work in the field of culturally competent medical care draws on studies showing that minority Americans often report lower satisfaction with care than White Americans and recommends that providers should adapt care to patients’ cultural needs. However, empirical evidence in support of cultural competence models is limited by reliance upon measureme...

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, America finds itself on the brink of a new racial consciousness. The old, unquestioned confidence with which individuals can be classified (as embodied, for instance, in previous U.S. census categories) has been eroded. In its place are shifting paradigms and new norms for racial identity. Eva Marie Garroutt...

American Indians exhibit suicide-related behaviors at rates much higher than the general population. This study examines the relation of spirituality to the lifetime prevalence of attempted suicide in a probability sample of American Indians. Data were derived from a cross-sectional sample of 1456 American Indian tribal members (age range 15-57yr)...

Steve Woolgar has urged the sociology of scientific knowledge to 'interrogate representation', and he has advocated an exploration of reflexivity issues as a means toward this end. However, ten years of scholarship addressing the meaning and purpose of a subdiscipline dedicated to displaying the social constructedness of all texts (including, at le...

En reconnaissant les progres constates dans la mise en place de programmes scolaires scientifiques destines aux enfants amerindiens aux Etats-Unis, cet article veut analyser de plus pres certaines consequences de l'application de cette nouvelle pedagogie. Il s'agit de montrer quelles sont les differences reconnues dans ces programmes entre les mode...