Publications

The chapter introduces a method of qualitative analysis which builds on socialpsychological theory about structures and relations in social practice. Conditions-, meanings- and reasoning analysis integrates societal and institutional structures in the conduct of everyday life of the citizens and in professional practice. The purpose of the analysis is to show the connections between institutional practice and the citizens’ everyday conduct of life with e.g. health problems, how the different practices influence each other, and what opportunities and challenges they include. By the use of examples from empirical research in patients’ perspectives on health practice in Greenland, it is shown how the method of analysis can be used on empirical material, what forms of knowledge and practice it analyses, and what kind of knowledge and action possibilities it generates.

The Inuit ancestors of the Greenlandic people arrived in Greenland close to 1,000 years ago.1 Since then, Eu- ropeans from many different countries have been present in Greenland. Consequently, the present-day Greenlandic population has $25% of its genetic ancestry from Europe.2 In this study, we investigated to what extent different European countries have contributed to this genetic ancestry. We combined dense SNP chip data from 3,972 Greenlanders and 8,275 Europeans from 14 countries and inferred the ancestry contribution from each of these 14 countries using haplotype-based methods. Due to the rapid increase in population size in Greenland over the past $100 years, we hypothesized that earlier European interactions, such as pre-colonial Dutch whalers and early German and Danish-Norwegian missionaries, as well as the later Danish colonists and post-colonial immigrants, all contributed European genetic ancestry. However, we found that the European ancestry is almost entirely Danish and that a substantial fraction is from admix- ture that took place within the last few generations.

The lifestyle of Inuit in Greenland and worldwide is undergoing a transition from a fisher-hunter to a westernized society and meanwhile the prevalence of type-2 diabetes (T2D) has increased dramatically. Stud- ies have shown that a common nonsense p.Arg684Ter variant in TBC1D4, which is frequent in Greenland, con- fers genetic susceptibility towards high risk of T2D. The aim of the study is to investigate whether a traditional marine diet, with high fat and low carbohydrate, will improve glycemic control in Greenland Inuit compared to a western diet. Moreover, we want to examine if the response is more pronounced in carriers of the p.Arg684Ter variant.

Abstract

The vision of the Greenlandic healthcare system is to make healthcare accessible to all citizens and better adapted to cultural background and lifestyle. To achieve this vision and promote self-care, there has been an increasing focus on involvement of citizens in both prevention and treatment of diseases. On this basis, we have studied health professionals’ perspectives on patient involvement.

The aim was to identify health professional and organizational drivers of and barriers to patient involvement in a hospital setting.

In 2018, three semi-structured research interviews and 12 observations were performed with 17 health professionals from eight professional staff groups. Malterud’s text condensation was used to analyze interviews and field notes. The findings involved: 1) organization of and transitions in patient pathways; 2) perceptions of patient involvement and professional role; and 3) prerequisites for patient and family involvement.

We found that most health professionals wished to involve the patients and that they were able to identify significant and accessible opportunities for improvement. One idea identified for improvement was information to citizens about how the healthcare system works. Furthermore, a greater overview of patient pathways – both locally and at the hospital – might support these efforts, creating improvements for both professionals and patients.