Health/Service Providers’ Perspectives on Barriers to Healthy Weight Gain and Physical Activity in Pregnant, Urban First Nations Women
The purpose of this article is to examine health/service providers’ perspectives of barriers to healthy weight gain and physical activity for urban, pregnant First Nations women in Ottawa, Canada. Through the use of semi-structured interviews, we explored 15 health/service providers’ perspectives on...
| Published in: | Qualitative Health Research |
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| Main Authors: | , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
SAGE Publications
2015
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049732315576497 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1049732315576497 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/1049732315576497 |
| Summary: | The purpose of this article is to examine health/service providers’ perspectives of barriers to healthy weight gain and physical activity for urban, pregnant First Nations women in Ottawa, Canada. Through the use of semi-structured interviews, we explored 15 health/service providers’ perspectives on the complex barriers their clients face. By using a postcolonial feminist lens and a social determinants of health framework, we identified three social determinants of health that the health/service providers believed to have the greatest influence on their clients’ weight gain and physical activity during pregnancy: poverty, education, and colonialism. Our findings are then contextualized within existing Statistics Canada and the Ottawa Neighbourhood Study data. We found that health/service providers are in a position to challenge colonial relations of power. We conclude by urging health/service providers, researchers, and policymakers alike to take into consideration the ways in which these social determinants of health and their often synergistic effects affect urban First Nations women during pregnancy. |
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