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Participatory Health Research in Latin America: Scientific Production on Chronic Diseases

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Participatory Health Research

Abstract

Since the early 1980s, participatory health research has been applied in the health field in Latin America; however, there is little knowledge about the approaches, directions, and specific types of participatory research related to chronic diseases. Thus, our aim in this chapter is to examine the participatory health research carried out on chronic noncommunicable diseases in the Latin American countries. We divided the chapter into three sections. The first describes the origins and emergence of participatory research and its variants in the region; the second gives an account of previous literature reviews on participatory health research; and the third is a review of 26 articles that use such research and focuses on chronic conditions. We identified four approaches: participatory action research, action research, community-based participatory research, and participatory research. The community’s participants were chronically sick people and their families as well as health workers and university staff working in the health services. The main aim of the participation was to change health knowledge and behaviors regarding risk factors and chronic conditions, and the nature of participation was passive in the form of consultation. We conclude that participatory action research has been displaced in the reviewed studies, since action research and participatory research have become the most commonly used approaches in the region.

The reliability of a science lies not so much in the positive rigor of its thinking, but in the contribution made by its practice in the collective search for knowledge that will make human beings … more fair, free, critical, creative, participatory, co-responsible, and expressing solidarity

—Carlos Brandão (2005:45)

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Fals-Borda (2001) notes that there are various schools, trends, or streams of participatory research. Other authors refer to approaches, types, or tendencies. In this text we use the term “approaches.”

  2. 2.

    This literature review focuses on articles on empirical studies carried out in the Latin American countries. The electronic bibliography databases searched were Index Medicus, SciELO and Redalyc, and the Google Scholar’s database. The following keywords were used: participatory research, participatory visual method, community-based participatory research, participatory health research, participatory action research, and participatory action. These keywords were combined with Boolean commands and the keyword Latin America and the name of each country in the region. We also used a berrypicking/evolving search mode employing two strategies, citation searching and backward chaining through the reference list Bates 1989.

  3. 3.

    Each article was assigned to a participatory approach according to what its authors themselves declared in the methodology section. The PHR characteristics analyzed were the approach or tradition behind the research, which authors’ framework were used, the purpose of the study, the participants involved, and the level of participation.

  4. 4.

    Libertad Hernández Landa was raped and murdered in August 1998 after being threatened as a result of her participatory research work on pederasty and child exploitation. This case is one of the Latin American experiences that illustrates the risks faced by committed researchers that go beyond value neutrality in their research practice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Depto Salud Publica, Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

    Francisco J. Mercado-Martínez

  2. Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

    Leticia Robles-Silva & Bernardo Jiménez-Domínguez

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  1. Francisco J. Mercado-Martínez
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  2. Leticia Robles-Silva
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  3. Bernardo Jiménez-Domínguez
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Social Health, Catholic University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Germany

    Michael T. Wright

  2. School of Public Health, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Krystyna Kongats

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Mercado-Martínez, F.J., Robles-Silva, L., Jiménez-Domínguez, B. (2018). Participatory Health Research in Latin America: Scientific Production on Chronic Diseases. In: Wright, M., Kongats, K. (eds) Participatory Health Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92177-8_10

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