Development and pilot testing of a model to translate risk assessment data for Great Lakes Native American communities using mobile technology

ABSTRACT

The Chippewa Ottowa Resource Authority monitors fish contaminants in Anishinaabe (Great Lake Native American) tribal fisheries. A software program (app) was programmed to translate and operationalize these data for the first time in an interactive, personalized, and culturally tailored format. This article reports the process for creation, and preliminary community reception, of interactive fish consumption advisory using software that can be accessed via mobile phones and/or the internet. Response data to previous advisories guided the app presentation and aesthetics. The app “Gigiigoo'inaan’ [Our Fish] presents personalized recommendations based on back-end calculated reference doses as well as a novel risk/benefit quantification originally presented by Ginsberg et al. (Human Ecol Risk Assess, Vol. 21, 2015, pp. 810–39) and Ginsberg and Toal (Environ Health Perspect, Vol. 117, 2009, pp. 267–75) to characterize nutritional benefits. The partnering organization, Inter-Tribal Council of Michigan recruited focus groups to pilot test the app for usability, influence on dietary behavior, and cultural appropriateness. The general concept of the app and the presentation of the data were deemed culturally acceptable and pleasing to the participants. The results suggest that risk-benefit data is valuable to end-users but meal frequency recommendations, typically based on federal guidelines, should also be clearly communicated. How these guidelines are selected and presented will likely impact the reception and adoption of consumption advice.

KEYWORDS:

• mercury
• omega-3
• fish consumption
• Anishinaabe
• Native American

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Dustin Hahn and the students at the University of Milwaukee, WI Mobile Innovation Laboratory for programming Gigiigoo'inaan. They also thank the Great Lakes Native American Research Center for Health for providing support to this and other similar projects in the region. The authors thank the tribal fishing families, the Sault Ste Marie Tribe, and the Chippewa Ottawa Resource Authority who have dedicated two decades of work to collecting these data. Tribal resources provided most of the analytical support in addition to partial support from the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's Great Lakes Human Health Effects program with Dr. J. Dellinger as the principal investigator, and the Indian Health Service's Native American Research Centers for Health program.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) grant number: 1R21ES025788-01 with additional support from the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians.