The MALAMA Aquaponics Project actually started back in 2009. One of our team members, Auntie Ilima Ho-Lastimosa, is a community leader in Waimānalo and has been doing community aquaponics education for over 10 years now. She saw the need and the interest for the community to grow their own food. Colonization impacted Native rights that people have lost in Hawaii, which fragmented and disconnected Native Hawaiians from their own traditional food systems, and being able to grow their own food and having access to land. She saw this disconnect and how it contributed to high rates of obesity and cardiovascular diseases among Native Hawaiians. I got connected with Auntie Ilima through my graduate research assistantship. I just kind of followed her around, and I was one of her fans.
interdisciplinary research
Research Leadership in Action: A Life Story and Lessons Learned by Dr. Veronica Womack
While growing up in rural Alabama, I had the great fortune of encountering life experiences that made me intellectually curious about the life circumstances and relationships that I observed. During this time, fundamental questions about rural people and places were formed and I have spent both my personal and professional life trying to answer them. My early career was focused on documenting and highlighting the lives of rural people, particularly those in the Black Belt region of the South. Not only was this region’s culture my own cultural heritage, it was also critical in the development of our country’s socioeconomic and political systems. So, while often overlooked, what happens in the Black Belt region matters, historically and today.
Road Mapping Interdisciplinary Community-Engaged Research for Health
To pave the way for further interdisciplinary research for health we, Farrah Jacquez and Lina Svedin (IRL Cohort 1), have developed a book series with the University of Cincinnati Press. Each volume in the edited series describes silo-breaking research that partners with community stakeholders to do work that will lead to community benefit.
Why I answered the call for IRL, and why we together answer the call for Interdisciplinary Research Leadership
The convening was a wake-up call about the value of community-engaged research. As a local sector, we had not built the base of evidence in terms of what had worked, was working or not, and what change was happening…and for whom. An influential outsider defined what impact local efforts would be measured by instead of the neighborhood residents who had worked so hard to rebuild their communities. We needed stronger research partners and evaluation capacities–and a more comprehensive approach to community building and understanding of impact.
Engaging for a Utah Strategy on Homelessness
We barreled across the high desert, five people to a car, training and debriefing as we drove, scouring data and reading other state plans in hotel rooms late at night, and stopping wherever we could for more coffee and chocolate. We did this because we care, and we believe that better policy is informed by local knowledge and that we train the next generation of interdisciplinary participatory researchers through mentoring and modeling. The students did it for the thrill of being engaged in something that matters.
A Reflection on How Structured Dialogue Validates Black Parents
As I reflect on our work using structured dialogue in Guilford County, NC, I become a witness to something happening in Next Generation Academy (NGA). Black parents begin to release some of the emotional burdens they retain from a long history of navigating the U.S. public education system.
