 |
| CNAH Director and Assoc. Professor of Family & Comm. Medicine, Tassy Parker, PhD, RN |
This is an exciting time at CNAH! We are experiencing incredible growth and achievement in service to NM Native communities and the UNM campus. As we continue to build on the strengths of our Center, staff, students, and faculty for the enrichment of community and campus we adhere to the CNAH vision and mission as follows:
Vision: The Center for Native American Health aims to be New Mexico’s best practice for building a Native health workforce, promoting health equity and supporting the development of healthy tribal communities.
Mission: The Center for Native American Health at the University of New Mexico builds capacity among students, staff, faculty, and community learners in weaving tribal sovereignty and Native American Core values across the missions of education, research and service for improving and sustaining Native American health and well-being.
With those guiding principles in mind, we now share a sampling of CNAH March highlights:
- We implemented a distance education collaboration with Diné College. In January, 2012, faculty and staff of CNAH and the UNM HSC Center for Telehealth & Cybermedicine Research traveled to Shiprock to meet with colleagues at Diné College to explore the building of a bi-directional educational bridge whereby participants from both institutions are the learners. Our collective interests are on public health education, integration of the cultural context of health, and increasing awareness of health professions opportunities and support for Diné College students at the UNM Health Sciences Center. Just two months after that first meeting CNAH delivered lectures on two public health topics (diabetes, culturally-informed evaluation) to approximately 70 students and faculty! Excerpts from the very positive evaluations by Dine’ College students, staff, and faculty include the following: “I think the speaker was well-informed about the topic about diabetes and he displayed a visually impressive PowerPoint in the ITV room”, “It was interesting and exciting overall. Thanks for sharing your presentation and study with Diné College”, “…information that I can share with my family”; “presentation was good information.”
- We increased the scope of the CNAH Newsletter from a student-only orientation to one that includes the broader community and campus interests. We invite our readers to contribute articles. Our success in connecting Native students with opportunities is exemplified by a recent posting in our newsletter announcing a summer training program offered by the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA). It attracted immediate and strong attention by our readers and we immediately reported the interest to the NIDA program officer, Dr. Kathy Etz. Dr. Etz responded in part that “…we received 12 applications from AI/AN students for this program. A first for us!” Our intention is to replicate that success for other audiences as well!
- We completed a pilot study on integrated care for depression treatment in primary care for off-reservation Native Americans and reported the results back to the participating off-reservation community in Albuquerque. The community-based participatory research study, funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Center for Health Policy at UNM, forged a strong partnership between the First Nations Community HealthSource (FNCH, a major provider of health services to Native Americans in Albuquerque’s southeast quadrant), leaders of the Rain Cloud (an organization of off-reservation participants dedicated to improving mental and behavioral health), other members of the off-reservation Native American community, and CNAH. As a result of the findings, and the close collaboration and trust-building over several years’ time, FNCH purchased a building, temporarily being referred to as the Native Wellness and Healing Center, for the promotion of health and social empowerment of the off-reservation community. This is a ground-breaking instance of converting the health equity concept, which is focused societal efforts to address avoidable inequalities by equalizing the conditions for health, especially for those who have experienced socioeconomic disadvantage or historical injustices, into a tangible outcome and benefit through collaborative research. It also respects and supports the Native American stakeholder voice in health self-determination. As the Native Wellness and Healing Center unfolds in name and purpose by the Off-Reservation Native community in collaboration with its partners, we will provide updates in this column.
~Tassy Parker, PhD, RN (Seneca)
Director
