Participatory video techniques have often been employed in the service of public health and research. For example,

• Video Volunteers in India recently collaborated with state sanitation workers to make a video exposing the unhealthy conditions in which they are forced to work;
• Sudden Flowers Productions is putting cameras in the hands of children living with HIV/AIDS in Ethiopia to explore and communicate their real experiences;
• Fly Up Media helped 5th graders from the Bronx to make a film about nutrition and sustainable farming;
• Barefoot Workshops recently launched Finding True North, a video program that works to give a voice to teens who have survived cancer, and let them communicate with kids who are presently dealing with cancer ; and,
• The VideoVoice Collective (our organization) recently finished a video on innovative approaches to encouraging healthy aging with the California Senior Leaders Program.

The list of public health-oriented participatory video projects and programs is expanding everyday. However, these projects are almost entirely uninformed by the research and experiences of community-based participatory research (CBPR) and vice versa, even though the two fields have a lot to learn from each other.

During the last ten years, and particularly since 2003, hundreds of scholarly articles and several books have been published on community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches in public health. Public health researchers and advocates have embraced the CBPR approach during a time in which growing concern for health disparities, the structural causes of disease, and social justice agendas have returned to the forefront of our field (M. Minkler & Wallerstein, 2003).

For those unfamiliar with the approach, CBPR is a systematic inquiry, with the participation of those affected by an issue for the purpose of education and action or effecting social change.(L. W. Green et al., 1995; L. W. Green, George, M.A., Daniel, M., Frankish, C.J. et al, 2003) The CBPR approach emphasizes community participation in all of the stages of research, including defining the research question, design, implementation, analysis, results reporting, and action on the results. Studies have found that, in partnership with communities, researchers can more effectively:

◊ Select relevant research questions (M. Minkler, Wallerstein, N., 2003);
◊ Enhance cultural sensitivity (Ammerman, Corbie-Smith, & St. George, 2003);
◊ Recruit and retain community members (Travers, 2004);
◊ Uncover lay knowledge critical to understanding health (Shah, 2004);
◊ Increase accuracy in interpretation of findings;
◊ Facilitate the dissemination and use of study findings; and,
◊ Increase the potential for turning research into action (Clements-Nolle, 2001).

In an adept summary of these successes, Corburn states, “When [CBPR] identifies hazards, highlights previously ignored questions, provides hard to gather data, involves difficult to reach populations, and expands the possibilities for intervention alternatives and success – science and democracy are improved.” (Corburn, 2005).

Although CBPR has been explored and developed with intensity during recent years, there remains a limited set of research methods available to practitioners of CBPR. A review of the literature reveals that the vast majority of CBPR projects utilize survey and text-based methods—methods that public health researchers (but rarely community members) have extensive training on and tend to be comfortable using. As an approach that values the inclusion of diverse ways of thinking, CBPR has a lot to gain from adopting methods beyond survey and text-based approaches. We must ask ourselves: does our limited set of tools result in limited community contribution to public health research and advocacy?

This dissertation project is motivated by the primary conclusions derived from the critical literature review included in the prospectus. As I conclude, there has been exponential growth in the use of a photographic CBPR methodology called photovoice during the last four years. This implies that there is an increasing interest among practitioners for a set of methodological tools that are unique to CBPR and yet expand our approach to include multiple medias.

Photovoice was originally developed and implemented by Caroline Wang, Mary Ann Burris, and colleagues in 1992 while working with rural village women in China’s Yunnan province (Lopez, Eng, Robinson, & Wang, 2005; C. C. Wang, Yi, Tao, & Carovano, 1998; Yi et al., 1995). Photovoice is described by Wang et al as “a process by which people can identify, represent, and enhance their community through a specific photographic technique” (C.C. Wang, Cash, & Powers, 2000). Founded on the principles of CBPR, photovoice is a collaborative approach to photography that involves community members in taking and discussing photographs as a means of catalyzing personal and community change (C. C. Wang et al., 1998). Photovoice is action-oriented and facilitates the use of photographs as “an advocacy tool to reach policy makers, health planners, community leaders, and other people who can be mobilized to make change” (C. C. Wang & Pies, 2004).

Since its introduction, photovoice methodology has been used with diverse populations around the world, such as high school students in Nigeria and black gays/lesbians in South Africa. It has been used to achieve participatory goals covering a wide range of issues, such as HIV/AIDS and breast cancer (Gavin, 2003; Graziano, 2003; Lopez et al., 2005; Short, 2006).

Photography has proved to be a powerful medium for engaging communities in CBPR– but it is not the only medium! More and more communities and activists around the world are using video to engage in community organizing, communication, and advocacy. However, video is yet to be adopted by public health practitioners of CBPR. The development of a new videovoice methodology is in concordance with the growing evidence, provided by photovoice, that multimedia tools offer unique opportunities for public health. In addition, the growing use, access, and simplicity of digital video production, results in new possibilities to explore more than pictures, adding moving pictures and dynamic sound to our CBPR toolbox.

Building on the work of photovoice practitioners, we can begin to explore a new approach to participatory video and to CBPR: videovoice. Videovoice can be defined as a health advocacy and research method through which people, who are usually the consumers of mainstream media or perhaps the subjects of media, get behind the video cameras to communicate their stories, knowledge, and visions. Videovoice will be a participatory media methodology and, so, projects will be undertaken by collaborative partnerships built of community members, academic researchers, and filmmakers. Forming a partnership among these disparate groups may be a community-building process that results in collective envisioning, filming, editing, and dissemination of films. Like photovoice, videovoice may facilitate:

(1) Research and documentation on a community’s strengths and challenges,
(2) Discussion of issues of importance in groups to promote critical consciousness and empowerment,
(3) Communication across communities (horizontal communication) and with policy- and decision-makers, institutional leaders, and program planners (vertical communication); and,
(4) Mobilization and action on social justice issues.

References

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Barsam, R. (1988). The Vision of Robert Flaherty: The Artist As Myth and Filmmaker. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Clements-Nolle, K. D. (2001). HIV prevalence, risk behaviors, and attempted suicide in a hidden population: Results from the Transgender Community Health Project. Unpublished Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, California.
Flaherty, R. J. (1922). How I Filmed ‘Nanook of the North. World’s Work.
Gavin, M. (2003). Spread the word. British Journal of Photography, 150, 31-33.
Graziano, K. J. (2003). Through their own eyes: A photovoice and participatory analysis into the lives of black gay and lesbian South Africans. Unpublished Ed.D., University of San Francisco, California.
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Wang, C. C., & Pies, C. A. (2004). Family, maternal, and child health through photovoice. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 8(2), 95-102.
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Yi, W. K., Li, V. C., Tao, Z. W., Lin, Y. K., Burris, M. A., Ming, W. Y., et al. (Eds.). (1995). Visual Voices: 100 Photographs of Village China by the Women of Yunnan Province.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Introduction.