Protocol paper for healthy ageing for Indigenous communities in India and Sweden with focus on nutritious and culturally adequate food provision.

background and purpose of studyThe elderly care regime for Indigenous peoples differs between India and Sweden. In India, the family cares for the elderly, while the responsibility in Sweden lies with the authorities. Food insecurity is the main problem in India, while lack of culturally adapted food is a problem in Sweden. In both cases, little knowledge exists on the importance of traditional food in Indigenous elderly care. By examining the use and significance of traditional food in elderly care for the Mal Paharia people in India and the Sami in Sweden, we focus on the following questions: What is the significance of nutritious and culturally adequate food? How are the elderly care regimes for food constituted? How can these regimes be improved using participatory methods? What policy recommendations can be created based on our study?. Our study focuses on the health, organization and welfare aspects of aging from an Indigenous perspective.

methodsA consistent perspective on this study is the decolonialized and liberating action research with Indigenous peoples (so-called PAR). The method is based on a triangulation and mixed-methods design and is made up of four different sub-studies: WP1 on Indigenous life stories about food; WP2 on quantitative surveys and nutrition index; WP3 on care regimes and WP4 on participatory implementation. The research groups in India and Sweden, which include both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people from each country, will collaborate through a consortium. Focus group interviews will be conducted both with the elderly (WP1) and with government representatives and recipients (WP3). The quantitative study (WP2) is based on already collected data material from more than 1000 elderly Sami in Sweden, the Sami Health on Equal Terms study and on data to be collected among 200 older Mal Paharia (two-stage clustering) in India. Interpreters will be offered for people who communicate best in their mother tongue. The implementation study (WP4) will be carried out with a bottom-up perspective, with a focus on food safety in India and food sovereignty in Sweden. DISCUSSION: Our study focuses on the health, organization and welfare aspects of aging from an Indigenous perspective. Older Indigenous peoples have knowledge about nutritious diets that are important to utilize, both from a care perspective, and from a longer-term self-sufficiency perspective, where their knowledge can give us keys to a more sustainable, culturally richer and biotope-wise more well-adapted future food system.