Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
Access to healthy, safe food resources is a significant challenge for rural coastal Alaskan communities, which are predominantly Indigenous Alaska Native. Traditional foods, including berries, fish, marine mammals, reindeer, and birds are critical for healthy diets, and are foundational for cultural connectedness and self-governance. As climate change and pollution increase, many community members and Alaska Native Elders have voiced food safety and security concerns related to environmental toxicants present in species harvested for traditional foods. Even if contaminants are not a present threat, apprehension surrounding consumption of traditional foods can lead to stress, loss of connection to place and traditions, and curtail the ability to thrive. Food safety monitoring programs have been utilized in geographically isolated communities to address these concerns, but the vast majority rely on contributory models that magnify inequities between communities and external entities and worsen or maintain the status quo regarding technological gaps and distrust. This dynamic ultimately limits communities' ability to take proactive responses to rapid changes in their local and traditional food species. Our vision is of an equitable community-university partnership that empowers informed decision-making related to food safety, while taking into account the health benefits of traditional foods and their importance for cultural continuity and community well-being, and in doing so, enhances Alaska Native resilience to the rapidly changing environment. To accomplish this vision, our proposed project directly responds to self-identified community needs and goes beyond the state-of-practice by creating a Tribally-led community-centered, on-site research laboratory on St. Paul Island, Alaska where tissue samples from traditionally harvested animals can be analyzed in real-time for contaminant concentrations by community members themselves, and be used to inform Tribal decision-making processes. The generated data will be input into a community-owned, user-friendly digital dashboard to facilitate information utilization and resilience. This will result in reduced delays, increased community ownership of and engagement with data on food safety, improved self-efficacy of residents as equitable, leading partners in the scientific community of practice, and improved trust in Tribal-university partnerships.By braiding Indigenous and western ways of knowing, as it relates to food safety and ultimate food security, this project will provide entry points into western scientific endeavors regardless of backgrounds and prior experience in western science, and promote diverse voices, community engagement, skill transfer, and knowledge sharing without historic gatekeeping. It invests in physical, personnel, and data infrastructures to enhance Tribally-led ecosystem monitoring, create a foundation for collaborative problem definition processes, and for Tribal and resident food practices and policies to be expeditiously informed by food safety monitoring data. This model will be highly applicable to rural and Indigenous communities across the circumpolar Arctic and beyond, particularly in cases where access to nutritious food is significantly constrained by living in store-bought food deserts, and we will identify the components of the program which can be scalable to enhance resilience in the face of rapidly changing ocean ecosystems and threats to food security.
Animal Health Component
40%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
10%
Applied
45%
Developmental
45%
Goals / Objectives
Our vision is of an equitable community-university partnership that empowers informed decision-making related to food safety, while taking into account the health benefits of traditional foods and their importance for cultural continuity and community well-being, and in doing so, enhances Alaska Native resilience to the rapidly changing environment. To accomplish this vision, our proposed project directly responds to self-identified community needs and goes beyond the state-of-practice by creating a Tribally-led community-centered, research laboratory on St. Paul Island, Alaska where tissue samples from traditional harvested animals can be analyzed in real-time for contaminant concentrations by community members themselves.In this vision, Tribal members, St. Paul residents, and university partners share equitable roles reflected in team composition, collaborative problem definition processes, and a budget equally split between community and university teams. Together, we will create and invest in physical, personnel, and data infrastructures to build a foundation for the direct monitoring of traditional food resources. In doing so, the cultural, socioeconomic, and nutritional dimensions of wild traditional foods and Indigenous food sovereignty can be braided with, and informed by, food monitoring data when discussing, studying, and addressing food safety.The goals of establishing such a center on island include: (1) Promoting Tribal-led research, monitoring and collaborations that will incorporate an inclusive understanding of the St. Paul Island ecosystem, are grounded in Indigenous, Traditional and Local Knowledge and empirical science, will facilitate Tribal-led stewardship and sciences, and will restore Indigenous connections to the marine ecosystem, and (2) Enhancing community resilience by ensuring that the Pribilof Islands are able to readily and quickly adapt to changing environmental and economic conditions, via new approaches to education, scientific research, and Indigenous Knowledge generation.Specific objectives include:Establish a Community-Based Bering Sea Research Centerin order to provide a Tribally owned and operated space to conduct community-led research; and ease the transition from the field to laboratory by offering tools for enhanced post-collection preparation, processing and analysis where possible and appropriate.Provide Skill Building and Workforce Developmentthat is structured to facilitate the blending of Indigenous and western ways of understanding around the topics of food safety and contaminant cycling in marine food webs.Implement Traditional Food Collection and Analysisincludingvarious fish and bird species, reindeer, Steller sea lions, and Northern fur seals, all of which aremajor traditional resources for the community.Create a Digital Dashboard with Data Equity, Access, and Privacyto provide the newly generated information to the community through a system that already has been determined to meet the Tribal community's needs for accessibility and ensures data sovereignty and community ownership of information.
Project Methods
Efforts that will result in a change in knowledge, action and/or conditions include:1) Instead of sending samples off-island for analysis, we will establish one of the three available laboratory bench rows within the newly emerging Bering Sea Research Center (RC) as a working station for analyzing total mercury in community selected traditional foods. This requires several pieces of equipment, as well as basic laboratory supplies. Critical instrumentation for this Pilot Project is a direct mercury analyzer (Nippon MA-3 Solo) that will be maintained in the RC. Metrics of success include equipment purchased and installed.2) We will host a training and workforce development experience for the Community Program Coordinator (CPC) at the University of Alaska to learn the instruments and processes. A Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), will be co-developed to guide the CPC's efforts, and ensure transferability and sustainability under any future staff-changes. Metrics of success include the CPC oriented and demonstrating efficacy in analysis skills.3) Curriculum for a One Health college-level course (class-room and experiential learning) will be developed with topics including but not limited to: the potential adverse effects of mercury to animals, how contaminants move through food webs, traditional practices of harvesting, and balancing the risks and benefits of consuming traditional foods. To respond to the requests of ACSPI and previously identified community needs, participants will gain experience conducting biosampling and analysis of traditional foods including following established protocols for sample preparation and processing, instrumentation, and QA/QC implementation and interpretation in the RC. The course will showcase beta versions of the digital dashboard to provide partners and the community opportunities to evaluate and provide feedback. Discussions will focus on how the data from the western analytical assessments of mercury can be braided with local knowledge and Indigenous ways of knowing, and provide space for exploring the balances between the health and cultural benefits of traditional wild foods, and data sovereignty. Curriculum materials will be made available digitally for the Tribe for use in perpetuity.4) The One Health course will be offered to St. Paul community members. The course will be offered for college credit. Pending community interests, we may offer a second in-person course in the early summer to target high-school aged youth who attend school off-island during the winter. Metrics of success will also include the number of participants, and participants' improved skills in conducting laboratory analyses.5) Surveillance and monitoring activities will begin following training. Samples of traditional foods for analysis will be collected voluntarily from and by community members, with participation encouraged through radio spots, social media posts (e.g., Facebook, Instagram), newsletters, and/or word-of-mouth. Collection will consist of a small (5g) sample of muscle or organ tissue, which will be stored in a labeled cryovial or Whirl-pak. We anticipate samples will include various fish and bird species, reindeer, Steller sea lions, and Northern fur seals, all of which are major traditional resources for the community and will average between 10-20 samples per month (total = 200). Samples will be stored in a -80°C freezer located on St. Paul Island, and the associated information will be entered into a centralized database. The CPC will lead analysis of the samples at the RC using a direct total mercury analyzerand update the database with the results. UA researchers will provide input, feedback, and any additional training needed regarding QA/QC and interpretation. Metrics of success include the number and variety of samples collected and analyzed.6) We will create a new data dashboard"ISN Environmental Contaminants Monitoring". Data from the community traditional food sampling program will be uploaded in near real-time to this app as analyses and QA/QC are completed. Community member users will be able to see analytical data, user-friendly visualizations, and information to assist in interpretation. Any sensitive or confidential information, including identity of individuals who provided samples, will not be made publicly available to safeguard privacy using existing standard operating procedures and protocols. Metrics of success include all data generated in the RC uploaded in public-facing dashboard, time from collection to database update, and number of dashboard views and users.Evaluation: The external evaluator, Shaffer Evaluation Group LLC, will design and conduct a mixed methods evaluation for project monitoring and assessment of effectiveness. During the project, the evaluator will meet with the project team at least quarterly to provide feedback from monitoring activities ("evaluation checkpoints") and will provide an annual report and briefing of findings. At the conclusion of the project, the evaluator will prepare the final summative assessment of the project's outcomes and offer recommendations for sustaining and replicating this model.High-level description of the evaluation approach: To monitor the project as it evolves, the evaluator will track the implementation of key project activities, including completion of these activities (milestones) and related outputs. Changes in project schedule or activity adaptations will be described in reports and used to update and adjust the project's logic model. Tracking fidelity of implementation requires primarily qualitative data, including information collected from the project team through the quarterly evaluation checkpoints and harvested from project documentation including planning and project team meeting minutes, course syllabi and enrollment lists, and project artifacts including data on traditional food sampling. Quantitative data will include course enrollment records, which will be collected on a semester basis, and data on traditional food sampling and dashboard usage. To gather feedback on project implementation, the evaluator will interview and facilitate focus groups and interviews with key project stakeholders, including the project leadership, Tribal government staff and leadership, and community members, including project participants, and analyze data collected through feedback forms. The evaluator will directly observe at least one short course during a site visit to St. Paul Island. To evaluate the effectiveness of the project, the evaluator will assess the degree to which project outcomes, as outlined in the measurement framework, can be observed. A pre-post study design will be used to assess change in several short-term outcome measures (e.g., self-efficacy for learning and doing science). Valid and reliable scales that assess participants' self-efficacy for learning and doing science, skills for science inquiry, and trust of external research partners will be administered via a survey at the beginning of the first One Health course and again during the final two months of the project in order to assess pre- and post-intervention effects. Because of the small number of participants, the evaluator will triangulate survey findings using qualitative methods to assess short-term outcomes, including interviews and/or focus groups with key project stakeholders. Other outcome data collections will take place following the completion of certain activities, such as the assessment of participants' understanding of key concepts of the One Health course at the conclusion of both course sessions. Given the short term of this project, we anticipate assessing only one of three possible intermediate outcomes - improved trust of external partners. The other intermediate outcomes and long-term outcomes are hypothesized to take place outside of the funding period for this project