School Travel Planning with the Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project: Partnership Perspectives

Abstract

Despite several studies examining the impact of school active transportation programming, there is limited understanding about undertaking the process of planning and evaluation from the perspective of community stakeholders. Most importantly, programming is rarely undertaken within an Indigenous context, which requires understanding of unique characteristics, culture, and needs. This study combined community-based participatory research with methods of ethnography within the Kahnawake Schools Diabetes Prevention Project in the Indigenous community of Kahnawake, Canada. This study fully engaged community members, built on pre-existing community and researcher strengths and increased the knowledge and understanding of active transportation to support schools in programming and implementation. In particular, this study, which may be relevant to other Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, shed light on stakeholder perspectives of undertaking school active transportation program planning, which can inform the practice and provide support to others currently or planning to undertake similar projects.