Abstract
Public engagement is an essential component of public health research, practice, knowledge exchange processes, and decision making. Citizen science was first documented in the early 1900s as an approach to public engagement and there is growing interest in how it can be used in health research. This commentary describes how citizen science approaches were incorporated into a public engagement activity as part of a population health intervention research project on the retail food environment, a workshop we hosted called The Food In This Place in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. We used citizen science methods and approaches to train and support participants to critically analyze a sample of everyday local retail food environments.
Key words: Public health practice, environment and public health, community participation
Résumé
L’intéressement du public est un élément essentiel de la recherche, de la pratique, des processus d’échange des connaissances et de la prise de décisions en santé publique. Les sciences citoyennes ont été décrites pour la première fois en tant que stratégie d’intéressement du public au début du 20e siècle, et leur utilisation dans la recherche en santé suscite un intérêt croissant. Notre commentaire décrit comment des démarches issues des sciences citoyennes ont été intégrées dans une activité d’intéressement du public dans le cadre d’un projet de recherche interventionnelle en santé des populations portant sur l’environnement alimentaire de vente au détail: un atelier que nous avons tenu à St. John’s (Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador) intitulé The Food In This Place. Nous avons utilisé les méthodes et les démarches des sciences citoyennes pour former les participants et les aider à faire l’analyse critique d’un échantillon d’environnements alimentaires quotidiens de vente au détail locaux.
Mots clés: pratique en santé publique, environnement et santé publique, participation communautaire
Footnotes
Conflict of Interest: None to declare.
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