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Introduction
I have skills and experience base in community based participatory research, cultural factors in measurement, analysis of change, small samples methods, statistical modeling and longitudinal analysis, qualitative methods and mixed methods, and multi-level intervention development/implementation.
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June 2012 - present
August 1990 - present
Publications
Publications (98)
Suicide research has focused primarily on risk factors at the individual level, overlooking the potential for community-level factors that confer protection from suicide. This study builds on the concept of cultural continuity from the Indigenous suicide prevention literature. It seeks to understand the collective influences shaping individual expe...
Chandler and Lalonde broadened the scope of inquiry in suicide research by providing theoretical grounding and empirical support for the role of community, culture, and history in understanding Indigenous youth suicide and reimagining its prevention. Their work pushed the field to consider the intersectional process of individual and collective mea...
The persistence of extreme suicide disparities in American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) youth signals a severe health inequity with distinct associations to a colonial experience of historical and on-going cultural, social, economic, and political oppression. To address this complex issue, we describe three AI/AN suicide prevention efforts that...
Background
Suicide among young people in Alaska Native (AN) communities was nearly unheard of through the establishment of statehood in 1959, but in the 1970s, AN suicide rates began to double every five years, with most of the increase due to suicide among 15 to 25-year-olds. From 1960–1995, the suicide rate increased by approximately 500% during...
Native American (NA) populations in the USA (i.e., those native to the USA which include Alaska Natives, American Indians, and Native Hawaiians) have confronted unique historical, sociopolitical, and environmental stressors born of settler colonialism. Contexts with persistent social and economic disadvantage are critical determinants of substance...
We examined the effectiveness of the Qungasvik (Tools for Life) intervention in enhancing protective factors as a universal suicide and alcohol prevention strategy for young people ages 12-18 living in highly affected rural Alaska Native communities. Four communities were assigned to immediate intervention or to a dynamic wait list. Outcomes were a...
As part of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention’s American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) Task Force, a multidisciplinary group of AI/AN suicide research experts convened to outline pressing issues related to this subfield of suicidology. Suicide disproportionately affects Indigenous peoples, and remote Indigenous communities can o...
Background
Research on sustaining community-based interventions is limited. This is particularly true for suicide prevention programs and in American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) settings. Aiming to inform research in this area, this paper sought to identify factors and strategies that are key to sustain suicide prevention efforts in AIAN commun...
Research in community settings, or field work, can be a challenging, lengthy, and even frustrating experience. The work can be especially difficult in ethnocultural communities when the researcher is working with the deep cultural lifeways and thoughtways of people who are different. Such challenges can be eased through use of certain principles an...
Historical and race-based trauma (HRBT) is a cross-cutting, intergenerational source of adversity that rarely is included in categories of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Unlike ACEs, HRBT is adversity that is embedded intersubjectively in family, kinship networks, and community as well as in society; that is, its negative impacts are systemi...
The ongoing challenge of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) youth suicide is a public health crisis of relatively recent historical origin inadequately addressed by contemporary prevention science. A promising development in AIAN suicide prevention highlights the role of protective factors. A protective factor framework adopts a social ecolog...
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native youth, and within the Alaska Native youth subpopulation, the leading cause of death. In response to this public health crisis, American Indian and Alaska Native communities have created strategies to protect their young people by building resilience using localized...
Background:
The Alaska Native Community Resilience Study (ANCRS) is the central research project of the Alaska Native Collaborative Hub for Research on Resilience (ANCHRR), one of three American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) suicide prevention hubs funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.
Objective:
This paper describes the developme...
In community interventions more generally, the concept of fidelity refers to the degree to which a program is delivered as intended. The present paper discusses ways in which fundamental aspects of participatory research challenge the concept of fidelity and differ from more traditional science-dominated approaches. We begin with a discussion of th...
This retrospective analysis of a long‐term community‐based participatory research (CBPR) process spans over two decades of work with Alaska Native communities. A call to action from Alaska Native leadership to create more effective strategies to prevent and treat youth suicide and alcohol misuse risk initiated a response from university researchers...
Highlights
Indigenous Peoples are concerned with previous experience of substance use research as disempowering.
Community psychology principles may inform ethical community‐driven substance use research.
We explore these principles through seven Indigenous substance use studies across the U.S. and Canada.
Indigenous substance use research reflects...
This concluding article to the Supplemental Issue on Promoting Health Equity through Rigorous, Culturally Informed Intervention Science: Innovations with Indigenous Populations in the United States draws themes and conclusions from the innovative practices implemented by the National Institutes of Health Intervention Research to Improve Native Amer...
Objectives: The foundational role culture and Indigenous knowledge (IK) occupy within community intervention in American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) communities is explored. To do this, we define community or complex interventions, then critically examine ways culture is translated into health interventions addressing AIAN disparities in existi...
Research in indigenous communities is at the forefront of innovation currently influencing several new perspectives in engaged intervention science. This is innovation born of necessity, involving efforts to create health equity complicated by a history of distrust of research. Immense diversity across indigenous cultures, accompanied by variation...
Given the paucity of empirically based health promotion interventions designed by and for American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian (i.e., Native) communities, researchers and partnering communities have had to rely on the adaptation of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) designed for non-Native populations, a decidedly sub-optimal approa...
This study explores continuity and change in the roles of rural Alaska Native grandparents, describing their importance in contemporary Yup’ik social life and structure. The study is distinctive in its focus on the experiences of Yup’ik grandparents who are primary caregivers raising their grandchildren in Southwest Alaska. Qualitative data were ga...
Health disparities exact a devastating toll upon Indigenous people in the USA. However, there has been scant research investment to develop strategies to address these inequities in Indigenous health. We present a case for increased health promotion, prevention, and treatment research with Indigenous populations, providing context to the recent NIH...
Suicide and alcohol use disorders are primary determinants of health disparity among Alaska Native people in contrast to the US general population. Qungasvik, a Yup’ik word for toolbox, is a strengths-based, multi-level, community/cultural intervention for rural Yup’ik youth ages 12–18. The intervention uses “culture as intervention” to promote rea...
This article builds on the People Awakening (PA) Project, which explored an Alaska Native (AN) understanding of the recovery process from alcohol use disorder and sobriety. The aim of this study is to explore motivating and maintenance factors for sobriety among older AN adult participants (age 50+) from across Alaska. Ten life history narratives o...
The Village Wellness Team Program is a locally developed, strength-based initiative of rural Athabascan Alaska Native villages to promote community resilience and wellness as a community-level universal suicide prevention effort. We used focus-group methodology to explore perceptions of Alaska Native residents in a rural Interior Alaska community a...
Richard Henry Dana was born on June 14, 1927, in Bronxville, New York. Dick was accepted to Princeton University in 1944 on a scholarship and graduated in 1949. He then became a student leader in the Congress of Racial Equality and participated in a series of nonviolent sit-in protests. He completed studies for his doctoral degree at the University...
Rural American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) community efforts addressing youth suicide and substance use disorders (SUD) represent some of the most innovative recent work in the field of prevention science. Epidemiological data identify AIAN youth suicide and SUD as a significant public health concern and health disparity, and important contextu...
Suicide and alcohol use disorders are significant Alaska Native health disparities, yet there is limited understanding of protection and no studies about social network factors in protection in this or other populations. The Qungasvik intervention enhances protective factors from suicide and alcohol use disorders through activities grounded in Yup’...
This introduction to the Special Issue Indigenous Youth Resilience in the Arctic reviews relevant resilience theory and research, with particular attention to Arctic Indigenous youth. Current perspectives on resilience, as well as the role of social determinants, and community resilience processes in understanding resilience in Indigenous circumpol...
Prevention research addressing health disparities often involves work with small population groups experiencing such disparities. The goals of this special section are to (1) address the question of what constitutes a small sample; (2) identify some of the key research design and analytic issues that arise in prevention research with small samples;...
Implications of the Advancing Small Sample Prevention Science Special Section are discussed. Efficiency and precision are inadequately considered in many current prevention-science methodological approaches. As a result, design and analytic practices pose difficulties for the study of contextual factors in prevention, which often involve small samp...
The stepped wedge design (SWD) and the interrupted time-series design (ITSD) are two alternative research designs that maximize efficiency and statistical power with small samples when contrasted to the operating characteristics of conventional randomized controlled trials (RCT). This paper provides an overview and introduction to previous work wit...
Qualitative methods potentially add depth to prevention research but can produce large amounts of complex data even with small samples. Studies conducted with culturally distinct samples often produce voluminous qualitative data but may lack sufficient sample sizes for sophisticated quantitative analysis. Currently lacking in mixed-methods research...
As part of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention's American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) Task Force, a multidisciplinary group of AI/AN suicide research experts convened to outline pressing issues related to this subfield of suicidology. Suicide disproportionately affects Indigenous peoples, and remote Indigenous communities can o...
We investigated acculturative hassles in a community cohort of Vietnamese refugees in Norway (n = 61), exploring cross-sectional data and longitudinal predictors of acculturative hassles using data from their arrival in Norway in 1982 (T1), with follow up in 1985 (T2) and in 2005-2006 (T3). To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinal study of...
The Elluam Tungiinun and Yupiucimta Asvairtuumallerkaa studies evaluated the feasibility of a community intervention to prevent suicide and alcohol abuse among rural Yup’ik Alaska Native youth in two remote communities. The intervention originated in an Indigenous model of protection, and its development used a community based participatory researc...
This study provides an empirical test of a culturally grounded theoretical model for prevention of alcohol abuse and suicide risk with Alaska Native youth, using a promising set of culturally appropriate measures for the study of the process of change and outcome. This model is derived from qualitative work that generated an heuristic model of prot...
This special issue of the American Journal of Community Psychology is the result of a 18-year partnership with Alaska Native communities using collaborative field based research methods. Its goal is to provide a case study fulfilling the spirit of ecological inquiry, offering a detailed and nuanced description of a community intervention. The artic...
The consequences of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and suicide create immense health disparities among Alaska Native people. The People Awakening project is a long-term collaboration between Alaska Native (AN) communities and university researchers seeking to foster health equity through development of positive solutions to these disparities. These eff...
What is it like to grow up Yup'ik and come of age today in a traditional hunting-gathering community setting located in a remote region of Alaska? Current research describes a contemporary experience often laden with trauma and crisis. Youth in Yup'ik communities today face threats to their very survival as they encounter, early on, things that the...
“Citizen participation means a horizontal, equal relationship. It means relating with the other at the same level. One understands one’s usefulness as part of the solidarity produced within the relationship. Accepting the otherness involves admitting different modes of knowing and making possible the dialogue and the relation with the other in a pl...
The Relationship dimension of the Family Environment Scale, which consists of the Cohesion, Expressiveness, and Conflict subscales, measures a person’s perception of the quality of his or her family relationship functioning. This study investigates an adaptation of the Relationship dimension of the Family Environment Scale for Alaska Native youth....
This introduction to the Special Issue Indigenous Youth Resilience in the Arctic reviews relevant resilience theory and research, with particular attention to Arctic Indigenous youth. Current perspectives on resilience, as well as the role of social determinants, and community resilience processes in understanding resilience in Indigenous circumpol...
The native people of Alaska have experienced historical trauma and rapid changes in culture and lifestyle patterns. As a consequence, these populations shoulder a disproportionately high burden of psychological stress. The Yup'ik Experiences of Stress and Coping project originated from rural Yup'ik communities' concerns about stress and its effects...
The use of telepsychology technology to deliver psychological services to geographically dispersed and isolated populations is on the rise. The increasing use of technology has not necessarily been accompanied by an enhancement in technology instruction by psychology training programs. A model of doctoral training is offered that integrates telepsy...
Concerns in some settings regarding the accuracy and ethics of employing direct questions about alcohol use suggest need for alternative assessment approaches with youth. Umyuangcaryaraq is a Yup'ik Alaska Native word meaning "Reflecting."
The Reflective Processes Scale was developed as a youth measure tapping awareness and thinking over potential...
Community-based participatory research (CBPR) with American Indian and Alaska Native communities creates distinct interventions, complicating cross-setting comparisons.
The objective of this study is to develop a method for quantifying intervention exposure in CBPR interventions that differ in their forms across communities, permitting multi-site e...
To report on a participatory research process in southwest Alaska focusing on youth involvement as a means to facilitate health promotion. We propose youth-guided community-based participatory research (CBPR) as way to involve young people in health promotion and prevention strategizing as part of translational science practice at the community-lev...
We describe important elements in the process of engagement with tribal communities in research with children and youth and their families. We believe it helpful to understand the research relationship with tribal communities through the lens of kinship relations. This calls for re-examination of the nature of research and researcher, with importan...
The nuclear family is often the point of departure in much of the existing acculturation research on refugee youth and children of refugees. The influence of other extended family members appears to receive less attention in understanding acculturation processes and intergenerational perspectives. This qualitative study explores the influence of ex...
To review the existing epidemiological literature on suicide and alcohol-related disorders and their social determinants in the U.S. Arctic, as it relates to U.S. government research and evaluation efforts, and to offer recommendations to boost research capacity in the U.S. Arctic and collaborations across the circumpolar Arctic as part of global h...
Research with Native Americans has identified connectedness as a culturally based protective factor against substance abuse and suicide. Connectedness refers to the interrelated welfare of the individual, one's family, one's community, and the natural environment. We developed an 18-item quantitative assessment of awareness of connectedness and tes...
Self-mastery refers to problem-focused coping facilitated through personal agency. Communal mastery describes problem solving through an interwoven social network. This study investigates an adaptation of self- and communal mastery measures for youth. Given the important distinction between family and peers in the lives of youth, these adaptation e...
This report describes how multiple community constituents came together to work with university researchers on developing a shared agenda for studying young indigenous people in five international circumpolar communities. The paper focuses on the set up and process of an initial face-to-face methodological planning workshop involving youth and adul...
This report describes how multiple community constituents came together with university researchers to develop a shared agenda for studying young indigenous people in five international circumpolar communities. The paper focuses on the setup and process of an initial face-to-face methodological planning workshop involving youth and adult community...
This unique book examines the physical, psychological, social, and environmental factors that support or undermine healthy development in American Indian children, including economics, biology, and public policies.
The reasons for mental health issues among American Indian and Alaska Native children have not been well understood by investigators ou...
This obituary describes the life achievements of Gerald Vincent Mohatt who lived from 1940 to 2010. His held a long history of commitment to the field of multicultural psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
Community-based models have become increasingly prominent in prevention, and have special relevance for suicide prevention in circumpolar Indigenous communities. It follows that outcomes from circumpolar suicide prevention programs might be more completely understood at the community level. We present here a methodology for analysis at this level....
Globalization has created an international arena in which economic advantages and emergent populations coexist. These new populations possess novel and often extraordinary human issues, interface and interpenetrate a new global context in which the same conditions for economic advantage for some result in disparities for the many. These new populat...
Globalization fosters a re-examination of multiculturalism in the United States. Existing historical multicultural populations comprise assimilated or bicultural af- fluent and professional class resident ethnic minorities as well as a resident ethnic minority underclass. In addition, rapidly expanding new multicultural populations include migrant...
From 1991-1995, the war in Croatia cost tens of thousands of lives (approximately 11834 persons killed between 1991-1994), and human rights abuses led to significant numbers of disappeared persons (3052). A total of 2395 families were searching for one disappeared person and 168 families of disappeared were searching for more than one person. 2035...
The People Awakening (PA) study explored an Alaska Native (AN) understanding of the recovery process from alcohol abuse and consequent sobriety.
PA utilized a cross-sectional, qualitative research design and community-based participatory research methods.
The study included a state-wide convenience sample of 57 participants representing all five ma...
Personal values, attitudes, and the unique life experiences within a cultural context provide the underpinnings for professional training in psychological science, research, and practice (for individual examples, see Strack & Kinder, 2006). These inextricably interrelated and complex components of professional identity are differentially affected b...
Cultural competence is more than an admirable goal: it is an essential skill set for mental health professionals working in a diverse global society marked by crisis and trauma. It is essential for clinicians to understand the intricate mix of history and self-concept, identity and tradition that are central not only for ameliorating psychological...
Recent research investigates major depression with seasonal pattern, also called seasonal affective disorder (SAD), depression in schizophrenia and seasonality in schizophrenia, but there exits limited research investigating SAD in schizophrenia. This study documents co-occurring SAD symptomatology in patients with schizophrenia at high latitude.
C...
Multicultural assessment supervision is supervision of an assessment process in which the person assessed and the assessor are from different cultural backgrounds, the supervisor and the trainee are from different cultural backgrounds, or an instrument used in the assessment was developed with a cultural group different from that of the person asse...
The objective of this study was to assess gender differences in disappeared persons and the circumstances of their disappearance. The method involved the completion of a semistructured interview and questionnaires by individuals searching for missing and disappeared persons in Croatia (1991-1995) as a part of the nationwide disappeared persons regi...
The objective of this study was to assess gender differences in
disappeared persons and the circumstances of their disappearance.
The method involved the completion of a semistructured
interview and questionnaires by individuals searching
for missing and disappeared persons in Croatia (1991-1995) as
a part of the nationwide disappeared persons regi...
A collaborative research process engaging Alaska Native communities in the study of protective factors in Alaska Native sobriety and the design of a preventative intervention using its findings is described. Study 1 was discovery oriented qualitative research whose objectives were identification of protective factors and development of a heuristic...
A collaborative research process engaging Alaska Native communities in the study of protective factors in Alaska Native sobriety and the design of a preventative intervention using its findings is described. Study 1 was discovery oriented qualitative research whose objectives were identification of protective factors and development of a heuristic...
In recent years the topic of acculturation has evolved from a relatively minor research area to one of the most researched subjects in the field of cross-cultural psychology. This edited handbook compiles and systemizes the current state of the art by exploring the broad international scope of acculturation. A collection of the world's leading expe...
Alcohol research in Alaska Native communities has a contentious history. This project has attempted to address a critical need for research to guide alcohol abuse prevention and treatment with Alaska Natives using culturally anchored participatory action research. The process of grounding the research methodology in the culture and community is des...
Alcohol research in Alaska Native communities has a contentious history. This project has attempted to address a critical need for research to guide alcohol abuse prevention and treatment with Alaska Natives using culturally anchored participatory action research. The process of grounding the research methodology in the culture and community is des...
Hermann Rorschach researched the utility of his inkblot experiment to understand psychopathology and cultural differences. Contemporary research with the Rorschach has evaluated its utility as a test, although it may more properly represent a clinical method with somewhat different evaluation criteria. Recent controversy regarding the adequacy of t...
Background
The People Awakening Project (1RO1 AA 11446-03) had two purposes, completed in Phase I and Phase II of the project. The purpose of Phase I was to complete a qualitative study; the research objective was discovery oriented with the specific aim of identification of protective and recovery factors in Alaska Native sobriety. Results were us...
A life cycle metaphor characterizes the evolving relationship between the evaluator and program staff. This framework suggests that common developmental dynamics occur in roughly the same order across groups and settings. There are stage-specific dynamics that begin with Pre-History, which characterize the relationship between the grantees and eval...
Circles of Care grantees were provided the opportunity to develop a locally relevant definition of serious emotional disturbance that would be used to define what type of emotional, behavioral, and mental disability would be required to receive services. After conducting detailed assessments of the definition in the guidance for applicants GFA and...
The process of describing existing services for American Indian and Alaska Native children with serious emotional disturbance by the Circles of Care strategic planning initiative is overviewed. We explain why service system description is important and how it helped define the role of evaluation within the initiative. Primary goals and methodologie...
Little information exists regarding mental health and special needs related to American Indian and Alaska Native (AI-AN) families. In this paper we emphasize the use of oral tradition during the Circles of Care initiative, which was essential in understanding cultural history and historical trauma of AI-ANs while giving a greater understanding of a...
The relation of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) to the Racial Identity Attitude Scale—Black, Short Form (RIAS–B) was examined among 50 African American male college students in a reanalysis of unpublished MMPI data described in R. H. Dana (1993). This permitted study of relationships between MMPI scores and specific psycholog...
The collaborative assessment model is extended as a training model. The experience of psychological assessment in American Indian and Alaska Native communities is often negative due to culturally inappropriate services and test interpretation. It is productive to address this negative experience, using it as a catalyst for learning. Training in mea...
The photoperiod model of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) suggests that SAD is caused by abnormal responses to seasonal changes in day length. Clarifying the utility of event-related brain potentials (ERPs) as diagnostic aids or measures of therapeutic efficacy in SAD requires understanding the range of naturally occurring seasonal patterns of var...
Existing research raises significant questions regarding the conceptual equivalence of standardized personality assessment instruments with American Indians and Alaska Natives. Standardized assessment research with American Indian and Alaska Native people is reviewed and methodologically critiqued. Alternatives to current practice are explored thro...
Managed mental health care cost-containment practices of risk-benefit analysis, provider usage, manipulation of supply and demand, gate keeping, medical necessity, and formulation have adversely affected quality of care. Improved mental health services are dependent upon redefining mental health problems and understanding inequities created by medi...
Proverb interpretations of subjects who scored high on the Perceptual Aberration-Magical Ideation Scale (Chapman & Chapman, 1985) were compared with those of low-scoring controls. Responses to 10 familiar and 3 unfamiliar proverbs were scored for Bizarre-idiosyncratic thinking (Marengo, Harrow, Lanin-Kettering, & Wilson, 1986) and literalness (Hert...
