In the past few weeks, a tribal health care system partnered with a university to open the first medical school branch on the lands of a sovereign tribal nation; physicians urge parents to continue vaccines as recommended by their doctor, following a controversial executive order; as uranium mining ramps up and lawmakers bid for more funding for victims of radiation exposure, people on Navajo nation are still suffering the affects of the nation’s first uranium boom.
Here is our latest roundup of Health Equity news from across Indian Country.
Doctors on Reservations
The University of Minnesota Duluth has launched a new initiative to train medical students to treat patients in rural and Native American communities. The school eliminated a requirement that medical students transfer to the Twin Cities for residencies and expanded a program that sends them to towns with populations under 25,000, including reservations.
The Gila River Health Care and the University of Arizona partnered to launch the country’s first MD-granting medical school branch located on the lands of a sovereign Tribal Nation. Starting next year, ten students will be admitted annually to the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Phoenix’s three-year MD-granting Primary Care Accelerated Program at the Gila River Branch.
The move aims not only to bolster the physician workforce in Tribal communities, but also to head off an impending physician shortage. Experts predict that the U.S. could face a shortage of 86,000 medical doctors by 2036, with rural and tribal communities seeing the most fallout.
Chickasaw Nation broke ground on a new major medical campus in Newcastle, Okla., a project that will expand healthcare access for Native patients through a partnership with the Indian Health Service.
Behavioral Health
A treatment center in Helen, Ore., that aims its services at Native Americans with substance use disorder flew patients in from around the country for treatment. Patients who didn’t finish the program were put on a bus to Portland, with no recourse to return home. An investigation by KGW8 followed elder Jerilyn Grassrope’s 1,4000 mile journey home to South Dakota after Medicine Wheel Recovery Services flew her to Oregon for treatment, then discharged her from its program via a one-way ticket to Portland.
Native leaders and organizations in Minneapolis have called upon city officials to address open-air drug use and its spillover effects in the city’s Native American cultural corridor with law enforcement. The Sahan Journal examined how the move is a shift away from harm reduction and the line between compassion and enablement.
Also in the Twin Cities, the MinnPost published a story about the Ain Dah Yung Center in Saint Paul, which provides free and permanent housing for Native American youth facing housing insecurity. Reported by area high school students through the Three Sixty Journalism program, the article explores the connection between housing, community, and mental health for Urban Native youth.
The largest clinical study of Urban Native youth and behavioral health found that a virtual intervention built around culture moved the needle on drug and alcohol use, as well as symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Vaccines
Physicians are urging Native communities to continue vaccination schedules after an executive order from President Trump called for immunizations to be spread out over separate pediatrician appointments. The order also advises against a handful of vaccines, flying in the face of the official recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Dr. Yolandra Gomez (Jicarilla Apache) told Native News Online that vaccines are especially important in Native communities, where children can suffer from diseases at higher rates than non-Native children.
“Native American children are sometimes the canary in the coal mine, so to speak, because we are a disenfranchised community,” Gomez said. “Our children tend to suffer from these diseases at higher rates than other children.”
IHS
The U.S. Senate on July 31 confirmed Mark Cruz, a citizen of the Klamath Tribes, by a 51-47 vote, to serve as director of the Indian Health Service (IHS), making him the agency’s 12th Senate-confirmed director and filling a leadership position that had remained vacant for more than a year.
The IHS announced $15.3 million in funding for staff housing in eight communities and service areas across Indian Country, including: Hoopa Valley, Santee Sioux Nation, Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, and Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium.
Good Read
As the United States ramps up uranium mining to meet a surge in demand, those still suffering the health and environmental effects of the nation’s first uranium boom are still fighting for justice — and healthcare. Senior Health Equity reporter Elyse Wild takes readers to the Navajo Nation, once the heart of the uranium mining that fueled the atomic age, where many are bearing the burden of chronic and deadly disease from rampant uranium exposure that continues today.
The post First-of-Its-Kind School; Vaccines; What the Mines Left Behind | Health Equity Round Up, August 24 appeared first on Native News Online.
