Abstract
The ever-increasing numbers of ethnic minority populations in the USA seeking social services suggest that a “multicultural paradigm shift” is underway and gaining speed. This shift will increasingly demand that prevention programs and interventions be more culturally responsive. Interventions that are not aligned with prospective participants’ world views and experiences are only minimally effective. Existing models for conducting culturally grounded program adaptations emphasize identifying distinct levels of cultural influences while preserving core elements of the original intervention. An effective adaptation requires competent language translation as well as trained translations of program concepts and principles that will be meaningful to the targeted group, without compromising program fidelity. This article describes how a university research team and curriculum developers worked with American Indian youth and adults in a large southwestern city using a CBPR process to identify cultural elements that became foundational to the adaptation of a prevention curriculum that is a national model program, with the objective of increasing its applicability for urban native youth.
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Funding
This research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (NCMHD/NIH), award P20 MD002316 (F. Marsiglia, P.I.), awarded to the Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center at Arizona State University. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NCMHD of the NIH.
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Leslie Jumper-Reeves, Patricia Allen Dustman, and Mary L. Harthun, Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center, Arizona State University; Stephen Kulis, The School of Social and Family Dynamics, Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center, Arizona State University; Eddie F. Brown, American Indian Policy Institute, Southwest Interdisciplinary Research Center, Arizona State University.
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Jumper-Reeves, L., Dustman, P.A., Harthun, M.L. et al. American Indian Cultures: How CBPR Illuminated Intertribal Cultural Elements Fundamental to an Adaptation Effort. Prev Sci 15, 547–556 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-012-0361-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-012-0361-7