Sherilee Harper

University of Alberta | UAlberta · School of Public Health

While evaluations play a critical role in accounting for and learning from context, it is unclear how evaluations can take account of climate change. Our objective was to explore how climate change and its interaction with other contextual factors influenced One Health food safety programs. To do so, we integrated questions about climate change int...

Transportation systems in northern Canada are highly sensitive to climate change. We project how access to semi-permanent trails on land, water, and sea ice might change this century in Inuit Nunangat (the Inuit homeland in northern Canada), using CMIP6 projections coupled with trail access models developed with community members. Overall trail acc...

Background Academic research on food security in Inuit Nunangat and Alaska frequently adopts the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations' working definition of food security and Western conceptualisations of what it means to be ‘food secure’. However, in 2014, the Alaskan branch of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) stated that aca...

Many caribou populations are declining across the Circumpolar North, presenting challenges for many Indigenous Peoples who have deep and enduring relationships with this animal. In Labrador, Canada, caribou herds have recently experienced population declines, including the George River herd, which has dropped by 99% from its peak, leading to the en...

Globally, co-management systems have emerged as negotiated agreements designed to share responsibilities among Indigenous Peoples and State governments for the management of fish and wildlife. Co-management practitioners and policies regularly make decisions that influence the ways in which Indigenous Peoples interact with the lands, waters, and na...

In this Personal View, we explain the ways that climatic risks affect the transmission, perception, response, and lived experience of COVID-19. First, temperature, wind, and humidity influence the transmission of COVID-19 in ways not fully understood, although non-climatic factors appear more important than climatic factors in explaining disease tr...

Amid the surge in research on mobility and migration in the context of environmental change, little research has focused on the experiences of people for whom travel is cyclical and a part of daily, weekly, or seasonal life. For Inuit in Arctic North America, the land is the heart of cultural and community life. Disruption to time spent on the land...

Commercial fishing supports coastal communities around the world and fishing livelihoods are often interwoven into local societies, including culture, identity, knowledges, and economies, particularly for many Indigenous Peoples globally. Through a case study with co-management board members in Nunatsiavut, Labrador, Canada, we explore how access t...

As climate change progresses, it is crucial that researchers and policymakers understand the ways in which climate-mental health risks arise through interactions between climate hazards, human exposure and social vulnerabilities across time and location. This scoping review systematically examined the nature, range and extent of published research...

The history of health research in Inuit communities in Canada recounts unethical and colonizing research practices. Recent decades have witnessed profound changes that have advanced ethical and community-driven research, yet much work remains. Inuit have called for research reform in Inuit Nunangat, most recently creating the National Inuit Strateg...

Following publication of the original article [1], the authors flagged that the article had published with several formatting errors: First, the author Kristie Ebi had been erroneously affiliated with all of the affiliations rather than affiliation 13, the correct affiliation; Second, Fig. 3 and Tables 6 and 7 had been incorrectly positioned in the...

Background There is concern in the international community regarding the influence of climate change on weather variables and seasonality that, in part, determine the rates of malaria. This study examined the role of sociodemographic variables in modifying the association between temperature and malaria in Kanungu District (Southwest Uganda). Meth...

Many Rangifer tarandus (caribou or reindeer) populations across North America have been declining, posing a variety of challenges for Indigenous communities that depend on the species for physical and cultural sustenance. This article used a scoping review methodology to systematically examine and characterize the nature, extent, and range of artic...

IntroductionThe global burden of maternal mortality remains high and inequitably distributed between countries. Antenatal care (ANC) was identified as critical component in achieving the Millennium Development Goal of improving maternal health. This scoping review aimed to summarize trends and critically explore research about ANC attendance for Ea...

Anthropogenic climate change and increasing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) together threaten the last 50 years of public health gains. Honey bees are a model One Health organism to investigate interactions between climate change and AMR. The objective of this scoping review was to examine the range, extent, and nature of published literature on the...

Objective To assess the extent of pregnancy loss (i.e., miscarriage and/or stillbirth) and examine its association with socio-demographic characteristics among Bakiga and Indigenous Batwa women in Kanungu District, southwest Uganda. Methods As part of a larger community-based, participatory project, a retrospective survey of maternal health histor...

Background Indigenous women world-wide are diverse and heterogenous, yet many have similar experiences of colonization, land dispossession, and discrimination. These experiences along with inequitable access to, and quality of, maternal healthcare increase adverse maternal health outcomes. To improve health outcomes for Indigenous women, studies mu...

If climate change is the “biggest health threat of the century,” what does this mean for regions experiencing the fastest warming on the planet? To respond to key Inuit health risks, we call for Inuit self-determination in climate-health research, underpinned by Inuit knowledge, Inuit-led approaches, and decolonization of research processes.

Assessing global progress on human adaptation to climate change is an urgent priority. Although the literature on adaptation to climate change is rapidly expanding, little is known about the actual extent of implementation. We systematically screened >48,000 articles using machine learning methods and a global network of 126 researchers. Our synthe...

Mining in Inuit Nunangat relies on a southern Canada fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) and local workforce. The FIFO workforce, combined with existing social determinants of health, can create health risks to Inuit Nunangat. These risks were increased with COVID-19. As newspaper reporting can shape public opinion and policy actions regarding these COVID-19 ris...

In this article, we present a case study of sewing as a strategy for arts-based inquiry in health research, situated within a broader project that highlighted Nunavut Inuit women’s childbirth experiences. Five focus groups were hosted as sewing sessions with pregnant women ( N = 19) in Iqaluit, Nunavut (2017–2018). Women’s reflections on the sessio...

The complex ways in which food security actions lead to nutrition and other health outcomes make it important to clarify what programs work and how, with theory-driven evaluation emerging as a promising approach to evaluate complex programs. However, it is unclear how and why theory-driven evaluation is applied in food security contexts. Our object...

Background Detailed qualitative information regarding Indigenous populations’ health-seeking behaviours within Peru’s plural healthcare system is lacking. Such context-specific information is prerequisite to developing evidence-based health policies and programs intended to improve health outcomes for Indigenous populations. To this end, this study...

We examine factors underlying hunting productivity among Inuit in Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, Canada. Specifically, we focus on the role of gasoline use as the main variable of interest—commonly cited as a crucial determinant of hunting participation. Over the course of 12 months, 10 hunters recorded their on-the-land activities using a GPS...

Globally, farmers report high levels of occupational stress. The purpose of this study was to identify and explore factors associated with perceived stress among Canadian farmers. A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design was used. An online cross-sectional national survey of Canadian farmers (n = 1132) was conducted in 2015–2016 to collect dat...

The normative concepts of equity and justice are rising narratives within global climate change discourse. Despite growing considerations of climate equity and justice within the adaptation literature, the extent to which adaptation research has worked to empirically assess and operationalize concepts of equity and justice in practice remains uncle...

The Batwa (Twa), an Indigenous People of southwest Uganda, were evicted from their ancestral forest lands in 1991 due to establishment of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. This land dispossession forced Batwa to transition from a semi-nomadic, hunting-gathering livelihood to an agricultural livelihood; eliminated access to Indigenous food, medicines,...

Climate change impacts on population health and wellbeing are spatially and socially distributed, and shape place-based capacities, constraints, and priorities for climate change adaptation. Inuit across the Circumpolar North have called for public health monitoring and response systems that integrate environmental and human health data, and provid...

Promoting and supporting Indigenous health includes ensuring health services reflect local concepts of health. There is, therefore, a need to better understand context-specific Indigenous understandings of health in order to design culturally appropriate health services. To this end, this study characterized two Shawi communities’ understandings of...

For many Indigenous Peoples in the Circumpolar North, cultural engagement and continuity across generations is directly related to relationships between and among people, animals, and landscapes. However, minimal research outlines the emotional responses and disruptions to culture and identity that are driven by ecological change, and the subsequen...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 5th Assessment Report (2014) assessed the state of climate change and health knowledge, globally through the Human Health: Impacts, Adaptation, and Co-Benefits Chapter and regionally through chapters, such as the North America Chapter. With IPCC’s 6th Assessment Report scheduled to be released in...

Public health interventions in many African settings have traditionally been driven by data on disease burden. Geography, especially in the context of climate change, is being incorporated into the process of health planning to enunciate the spatial and place-specific nature of health and disease. This chapter will describe a case of how geography...

Dogs are reservoirs for many zoonoses. In southern Ontario, Canada, minimal data exist on the sources from which domestic dogs are acquired (i.e., domestic or imported). The objectives of this study were to (1) describe the proportions of domestically sourced and imported dogs in southern Ontario, Canada, (2) describe the characteristics of newly a...

With the widespread use of digital media as a tool for documentation, creation, preservation, and sharing of audio-visual content, new strategies are required to deal with this type of “data” for research and analysis purposes. This article describes and advances the methodological process of using documentary film as a strategy for qualitative inq...

Participation is increasingly being used in the modelling of climate-sensitive systems to improve usability. Bottom-up, place-based approaches to modelling can challenge the dominantly positivist approaches used until recently. We examined how participation is reported within modelling research that uses participatory approaches, focusing on the Ar...

Background: Climate change has important implications for mental health globally. Yet, few studies have quantified the magnitude and direction of associations between weather and mental health-related factors, or assessed the geographical distribution of associations, particularly in areas experiencing rapid climatic change. This study examined th...

Background Climate change is expected to decrease food security globally. Many Indigenous communities have heightened sensitivity to climate change and food insecurity for multifactorial reasons including close relationships with the local environment and socioeconomic inequities which increase exposures and challenge adaptation to climate change....

Inuit communities in the Circumpolar North have experienced a nutrition transition characterized by the decreased intake of culturally important, nutrient-rich traditional food (country food), and an increased intake of market food, resulting in concerns over reduced diet quality and emerging chronic diseases. Nutrition in early life is critical fo...

The prevalence of Toxoplasma gondii exposure in Inuit living in Nunavut (20%) is twice that of the US (11%); however, routes of exposure for Inuit communities in North America are unclear. Exposure to T. gondii in humans has been linked with consumption of raw or undercooked shellfish that can accumulate environmentally resistant oocysts. Bivalve s...

We assess whether the household is an apt scale of analysis to examine food insecurity of Indigenous Batwa of Kanungu District, Uganda. Our objectives were: 1) estimate the prevalence and range of food insecurity, 2) estimate the variation in food insecurity associated with household and community factors. The survey was administered 6 times at 3-m...

Background: Working in agriculture has been associated with increased prevalence of psychological distress and mental health concerns. Farmers are also less likely than non-farmers to seek-help for their mental health. Previous research examining help-seeking among farmers has focused predominantly on male farmers, and has not included many of the...

Established in Article 14 of the Paris Agreement, countries must evaluate progress toward climate adaptation, mitigation, and financial goals via the 2023 global stocktake. Yet, the extent of climate integration into evaluation in response to the rapidly approaching stocktake mandate remains unclear. Many United Nations agencies recognize the impor...

Background Climate change is a defining issue and grand challenge for the health sector in North America. Synthesizing evidence on climate change impacts, climate-health adaptation, and climate-health mitigation is crucial for health practitioners and decision-makers to effectively understand, prepare for, and respond to climate change impacts on h...

Domestic dogs ( Canis familiaris ) provide important benefits to human beings but can also transmit pathogens. Information on the breadth of canine zoonoses and vectorborne research in North America is scarce. A scoping review was conducted to examine (1) the number and type of canine zoonoses and vectorborne studies in domestic dogs conducted in N...

Background The effects of food insecurity linked to climate change will be exacerbated in subsistence communities that are dependent upon food systems for their livelihoods and sustenance. Place-and community-based forms of surveillance are important for growing an equitable evidence base that integrates climate, food, and health information as wel...

Anthropogenic climate change and increasing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) together threaten the last 50 years of public health gains. Honey bees are a model One Health organism to investigate interactions between climate change and AMR. The objective of this scoping review was to examine the range, extent, and nature of published literature on the...

Climate change is projected to negatively affect human health and nutrition. There is a growing literature on the effects of climatic changes on food availability, quantity, and agricultural production, but impacts on the nutritional content of foods has not been widely studied. The aim of this paper is to systematically characterise empirical lite...

Access to safe drinking water is limited in many isolated areas, such as the Amazon where Indigenous peoples frequently reside. Identifying safe forms of drinking water accepted by the communities could have positive health benefits for Indigenous peoples. Many Amazon Indigenous peoples traditionally prepare and consume a fermented beverage called...

Traditional Inuit cultural values and practices are integral to an Inuit understanding of health. We examine the role of sewing in Inuit women’s health in the Canadian Arctic in a case study of Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories, Canada. An analysis of data collected using semi-structured interviews with 30 Inuit women reveals that sewing contribute...

Across Inuit Nunangat, Inuit rely on wildlife for food security, cultural continuity, intergenerational learning, and livelihoods. Caribou has been an essential species for Inuit for millennia, providing food, clothing, significant cultural practices, and knowledge-sharing. Current declines in many caribou populations—often coupled with hunting mor...

Current challenges relating to water governance in Canada are motivating calls for approaches that implement Indigenous and Western knowledge systems together, as well as calls to form equitable partnerships with Indigenous Peoples grounded in respectful Nation-to-Nation relationships. By foregrounding the perspectives of First Nations, Inuit, and...

Understanding how climate change will affect global health is a defining challenge this century. This is predicated, however, on our ability to combine climate and health data to investigate the ways in which variations in climate, weather, and health outcomes interact. There is growing evidence to support the value of place- and community-based mo...

We reviewed the nature, range, and extent of literature on drinking water and human health outcomes in the context of climate change in the Circumpolar North. We used a systematic process to identify and synthesize articles. While the number of climate-water-health articles increased recently, this topic remains under-studied despite the transforma...

Nunavut’s maternal healthcare system is characterized by rapid transition from community-based birth to a practice of obstetric evacuation and institutionalized birth. Given calls for Inuit self-determination in research, maternal health research – which informs healthcare practices and policies – may need to be conducted differently, using differe...

Rapid environmental change due to climate change impacts Inuit mental wellness by altering the relationships between people, place, livelihoods, and culture. Little is known, however, about how fluctuations in weather contribute to the experience of place and the connection to mental wellness in Inuit communities. This study aimed to characterize t...

Indigenous peoples globally have high exposure to environmental change and are often considered an “at-risk” population, although there is growing evidence of their resilience. In this Perspective, we examine the common factors affecting this resilience by illustrating how the interconnected roles of place, agency, institutions, collective action,...

This study evaluated the impact of “In the Know” mental health literacy training for Canadian agriculture. We hypothesized that “In the Know” would significantly increase participants’ knowledge around mental health, confidence in recognizing mental health struggles, confidence in speaking about mental health with others, and confidence in helping...

Amidst unprecedented variability and change in climate across the Circumpolar North, increasing attention has been directed towards integrated environment and health monitoring systems to inform responses to climate change impacts on Inuit health. Yet, existing monitoring systems are often not designed to consider Inuit-identified conceptualization...

Indigenous Peoples globally are among those who are most acutely experiencing the mental health impacts of climate change; however, little is known about the ways in which Indigenous Peoples globally experience climate-sensitive mental health impacts and outcomes, and how these experiences may vary depending on local socio-cultural contexts, geogra...

This study investigated self‐reported dog bites in humans in rural and urban households in southern Ontario, Canada. Our objectives were to determine, and compare, the incidence of dog bites in rural and urban households, and to describe the profile of bite victims, biting dogs, and the proportion of biting dogs that respondents self‐reported as be...

Climate change impacts on water systems have consequences for Indigenous communities. We documented climatic changes on water systems observed by Indigenous Shawi and resultant impacts on health and livelihoods, and explored adaptation options and challenges in partnership with two Indigenous Shawi communities in the Peruvian Amazon. Qualitative da...