Publications

In Greenland, the universal parenting programme MANU was developed in 2016. After documenting the initial years of MANU’s implementation, this study aimed to identify implementation determinants focusing on i) which context MANU was conceptualised in and how it was developed and ii) how MANU was implemented and initially received in the healthcare system. A qualitative in-depth implementation study was conducted: document analysis, 38 interviews, one focus group discussion, and observations at two trainings for professionals and four parent sessions. Participants included stakeholders from both the health and social sector and from management to practitioner level. MANU was conceptualised based on a political desire to ensure children’s well-being by providing parents with the essential parenting skills, and a desire to create a programme for the Greenlandic context. Professionals welcomed the MANU materials, but anticipated or experienced barriers in implementing MANU. The first years of MANU focused on disseminating material and training professionals. Despite political support and financial security enabling implementation, an assessment of the implementation capacity from the very beginning could have prevented some of the implementation challenges identified. Insights on parents’ perspectives and local implementation are lacking and need to be brought to the forefront of the implementation process.

Health care delivery in the Circumpolar North is challenged by a scarcity of culturally relevant health care services, few medical providers trained in cross-cultural care, and high costs of transportation. Community health workers (CHWs) are primarily Indigenous individuals who provide on-the-ground health care and health promotion services in their own communities.The CHWs’ scope of work varies from health education to clinical care and often focuses on upstream factors that impact the public’s health. Although often overlooked and underutilized, the CHW role is an innovative approach to promoting more sustainable and culturally relevant care within health systems. Investigating and understanding the potential ways that CHW-integrated health care systems support health and wellness could allow for a clearer understanding of how to translate this approach to other regions seeking a transition to sustainability in health and wellness. Drawing on experiences with CHWs in the Circumpolar North, this article introduces a conceptual model summarizing pathways that describe how integrating CHWs supports wellness in their communities. The proposed model includes five pathways for how CHWs could support wellness: (1) the recruitment of CHWs from within a community promotes community capacity and control; (2) the CHW role allows them to advocate to address structural and systemic inequalities that contribute to ill health, if CHWs are supported to organize their communities around wellness; (3) CHWs have the potential to support and empower community members; (4) CHWs have the potential to develop culturally relevant, feasible, and effective health promotion strategies; and (5) CHWs have the potential to build on community strengths. This model allows for CHW-integrated health care systems to be critically examined to both test and refine this proposed model, and support and empower community health workers as a transition to a more sustainable health care delivery system that reduces inequities and promotes health.

Objectives: Patient experiences with health systems constitute a crucial pillar of quality care. Across the Arctic, patients’ interactions with the healthcare system are influenced by challenges of access, historical inequities and social determinants. This scoping review sought to describe the range and nature of peer-reviewed literature on patient experience studies conducted within the circumpolar region.

Design: In a partnership between Danish/Greenlandic, Canadian and American research teams, a scoping review of published research exploring patient experiences in circumpolar regions was undertaken.

Data sources: Seven electronic databases were queried: MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, ‘Global Health 1910 to 2019 Week 11’, CINAHL, PsycINFO and SveMed+.

Eligibility criteria: Articles were eligible for inclusion if they (a) took place in the circumpolar region, (b) reported patients’ perspective and (c) were focussed primarily on patient experiences with care, rather than satisfaction with treatment outcome.

Data extraction and synthesis: Title and abstract screening, full-text review and data extraction was conducted by four researchers. Bibliometric information such as publication date and country of origin was extracted, as was information regarding study design and whether or not the article contained results relevant to the themes of Indigenous values, rural and remote context, telehealth and climate change. Two researchers then synthesised and characterised results relevant to these themes.

Results: Of the 2824 articles initially found through systematic searches in seven databases, 96 articles were included for data extraction. Findings from the review included unique features related to Indigenous values, rural and remote health, telehealth and climate change.

Conclusions: The review findings provide an overview of patient experiences measures used in circumpolar nations. These findings can be used to inform health system improvement based on patient needs in the circumpolar context, as well as in other regions that share common features. This work can be further contextualized through Indigenous methodologies such as sharing circles and community based participatory methods.

Nabo er et projekt, der blev lanceret under det svenske formandskab i Nordisk Ministerråd 2018. Projektet ledes af den svenske Myndigheten för ungdoms- och civilsamhällesfrågor i perioden 2018-2020 og sigter mod at skabe nordiske unges perspektiver på det sociale inklusion. Unges stemmer høres i spørgsmål om deres liv. og baseret på denne viden, får de muligheden for at deltage i og påvirke politiske beslutninger.

Unge mennesker bliver bedt om at beskrive deres hverdag og hvordan de oplever deres muligheder og forhindringer. Fra deres historier bygger Nabo en ramme af succesfaktorer for social integration i de nordiske lande.

Denne rapport er baseret på fokusgruppeinterviews med unge mennesker forskellige steder i Grønland. Lignende undersøgelser gennemføres i de andre nordiske lande på Færøerne og Åland.

Center for Folkesundhed i Grønland har i sommeren 2019 gennemført en kvalitativ pilotundersøgelse, der har undersøgt borgernes oplevelse af det grønlandske sundhedsvæsen.

Formålet med undersøgelsen har været at give et indblik i, hvordan adgangen til sundhedsvæsenet opleves af borgerne, og hvad der er vigtigt for borgerne, når de møder sundhedsvæsenet som brugere. Dermed giver undersøgelsen os et vigtigt grundlag for at arbejde videre med udviklingen af et langsigtet og nationalt design for øget brugerinddragelse og brugerevaluering i det grønlandske sundhedsvæsen - et grundlag, der tager udgangspunkt i borgernes egne perspektiver, og som er kulturel relevant.