Community Discussion of Results

If we work together right, the community will be in the driver's seat from the start of the project. The community will decide on the most important questions or actions to take. The community will choose a research strategy. The community will think ahead about the meaning of different test results, and it will choose how much it wants to participate in the research done or actions taken. The community will approve a project plan, and will choose what laboratory to work with.

If all these things take place, then the community discussion of results will naturally flow from the entire process. The science advisor and the community can review the results together knowing what questions the results are meant to address.

We are building on work in Canada to be able to talk about contaminants in terms that we all can understand. We start with estimates of "tolerable daily intake" of each type of contaminant for a person of a given weight. Then, based on the measured amount of contaminants in Native foods, we estimate the amount of a Native food that falls within the tolerable daily intake of the contaminant. You can click to see a draft of a "Food Intake Spreadsheet" that shows this type of calculation.

Now that you have read through all the planning steps, we hope that your tribe will decide to initiate your own project. And we would like to help you.  Click here to return to table of contents to the Resource Guide.

For more information, please contact:

Jack Kruse afjak@uaa.alaska.edu or 
Patricia Cochran anpac1@uaa.alaska.edu.