2018 Award

Duncan Pedersen Award 2018

Congratulations, Katherine Pizarro!

Katherine Pizarro is a doctoral candidate in the Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill, working under the supervision of Danielle Groleau. Before coming to McGill, Katherine completed her Master's Degree in International Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and her Bachelor's Degree in Cognitive Science at Carleton College. She has conducted research to inform the design and evaluation of public health policies and programs in a variety of international settings. Her research uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to understand the social and cultural aspects of health behaviors, including substance use, nutrition, and newborn care. Her doctoral research will take a participatory research approach to developing and evaluating a program to address the social determinants of mental health and wellbeing among indigenous populations in Guatemala. She is a recipient of the Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

Research: Promoting indigenous men’s wellbeing: Participatory evaluation research in Guatemala

Civil war, discrimination and structural violence have profoundly impacted the mental health of indigenous men in Guatemala. Men’s distress, substance use and domestic violence play a key role in propagating poor mental health across generations. However, despite a documented need for programs to address men’s psychosocial wellbeing, evidence-based and culturally appropriate interventions for indigenous men in Guatemala are systematically lacking. Moreover, the context and meaning of men’s psychosocial wellbeing are poorly understood, making it difficult to plan and evaluate potential interventions.

For her PhD research, Katherine is collaborating with Guatemala-based organization Buena Semilla and local indigenous communities to develop and evaluate participatory, community-based strategies to address men’s psychosocial wellbeing and the health of their families. She will use funds from the Duncan Pedersen award to support the first formative research phase of this project. She will conduct free listening sessions with groups of adolescent boys, adult men, elders, traditional healers and local health professionals in Santiago Atitlan, Sololá, Guatemla to identify the various aspects of men’s wellbeing, manifestations of distress and social conditions that contribute to men’s psychosocial health. She will then conduct key informant interviews to explore local idioms of distress, constructions of men’s wellbeing and associated social conditions in greater depth. Results will be used to guide the development of holistic, culturally-grounded intervention strategies, and aid in the development a local instrument to measure the impact of community-based interventions on men’s psychosocial health and wellbeing.