Urban
American Indian Health Service of Chicago, Inc. – Purpose Area 2
The American Indian Health Service of Chicago, Inc. project focuses on: 1) identifying and addressing suicide ideations, attempts, and contagions among AI/AN people within their service population through the development and implementation of culturally appropriate and community relevant prevention, intervention, and postvention strategies and 2) increases provider and community education on suicide and methamphetamine use by offering culturally appropriate trainings.
American Indian Health Service of Chicago, Inc. – Purpose Area 4
American Indian Health Services of Chicago, Inc.’s Youth Development Program has two goals: 1) reduce risk factors, such as suicide, substance abuse, well as other forms of abuse and 2) increase resiliency for Urban Native youth, living in Chicago. As a result of these goals, AIHSC‘s Youth Development Program works with both incarcerated and non-incarcerated Native youth, residing in Chicago and the Chicago-land area. AIHSC ‘s Youth Development Program provides: 1) one on one case management, provided by AIHSC’s Youth Social Worker, 2) resource referrals to AIHSC partner agencies that address legal issues, social services and employment, 3) academic support, through the mechanism of academic/educational workshops and resources and 4) weekly therapeutic youth groups.
American Indian Health and Family Services, Inc. of Southeast Michigan
The American Indian Health and Family Services, Inc. (AIHFS) “Weneniiganzejik: The Future Leaders” Project serves Southeastern Michigan American Indian/Alaska Native youth ages 8 to 24. This project specifically focuses on AI/AN youth who are at a higher risk of substance use disorders and suicide than other racial/ethnic groups in the United States. As an organization with a strong relationship to Indigenous youth and families, AIHFS is well equipped to promote early intervention strategies and implement positive youth development programming to reduce risk factors for substance abuse and suicidal behavior. AIHFS collaborates with local American Indian service organizations, various community organizations, and their own medical and behavioral health departments. Along with collaboration efforts, the AIHFS Youth Group team utilizes evidence-based, practice-based and culturally based approaches to build resiliency, promote positive development, increase self-sufficiency, promote family engagement, and increase access to prevention activities.
American Indian Health and Services of Santa Barbra, CA
The American Indian Health and Services (AIHS) Generation Indigenous project aims to reduce risk factors for suicidal behavior and substance abuse among AI/AN youth up to age 24 within Santa Barbara and surrounding communities by promoting positive youth development and family engagement through early intervention strategies. The goal of the AIHS project is to develop and sustain a comprehensive and culturally responsive prevention, early intervention, and referral to treatment system of care that builds on the strengths, resiliencies, and protective factors of Native American youth, their families, and their communities to prevent methamphetamine/substance use that contributes to suicidal behavior.
American Indian Health Association of Tucson, Inc.
The Tucson Indian Center Native Pride project provides urban American Indian youth with a cultural arts, evidence-based afterschool curriculum, which has demonstrated meaningful change in youths’ lives by increasing their protective factors against suicide. The afterschool program is provided in partnership with a local Tribal charter school and three public school districts, providing over 1,000 afterschool encounters with urban Indian youth each year. The content of this curriculum addresses Identity, Self-esteem and Empowerment, Healthy Relationships, Situational Awareness / Resiliency, Community, Growth, and Health and Wellness. Data has shown the curriculum to improve youth self-esteem, sense of belonging, cultural continuity/ participation, self-reported participation in American Indian arts and in seeking advice from elders. Youth also reported significantly lower anxiety levels, a strong sense of group belonging, increased conflict resolution skills, and an increased interest in American Indian culture. The Native Pride Project also provides additional suicide and methamphetamine prevention activities through a youth summer camp, monthly young adult support group, community wellness events, evidence-based suicide prevention skills trainings, and other activities.
Bakersfield American Indian Health Project
Bakersfield American Indian Health Project (BAIHP) is located in Bakersfield, California, originally founded in 1997. BAIHP provides behavioral health and substance misuse counseling, community health education events, promotes cultural connection, and implements evidence-based curriculum. The BAIHP project has expanded its services to include weekly prevention groups for youth.
First Nations Community Health Source
The First Nations Community Health Source’s Suicide Prevention Project (SPP) aims to decrease suicide risk among 500 American Indians in the Albuquerque, New Mexico area and increase access to depression and suicide risk screenings and culturally appropriate evidence based interventions, treatment, and prevention education. Behavioral health services provide depression screenings and suicide assessments. In addition, services include suicide risk prevention/interventions using evidence-based practices, including Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT). The SBIRT integrated services into primary care fully address the spectrum of depression and suicide risk impacting youth’s physical wellness. In addition to suicide screenings, referrals, and intervention, SPP will provide culturally appropriate suicide prevention education targeting youth.
Fresno American Indian Health Project
The Fresno American Indian Health Project (FAIHP) offers behavioral health referrals, resources, and structured prevention and treatment services targeting American Indian youth ages 8-24, and their families in Fresno County, California. The FAIHP provides services to youth through case management, individual, and group treatment. The American Indian Life Skills, Native HOPE curriculum, Seven Sacred Teachings, leadership, and recreation activities are continuous activities throughout the year. The FAIHP coordinates, facilitates, and trains community members to work with youth ages 13 through 17 years old at the Gathering of Native Americans (GONA) cultural camp, which occurs annually during the summer.
Friendship House Association of American Indians, Inc.
The Friendship House Association of American Indians, Stronghold Project II, targets Native youth ages 8 to 24 that are at risk for substance abuse and suicide in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Stronghold Project II will strengthen cultural systems and family capacity by addressing the issues of family violence, including accidental death, injury, and suicide, due to substance abuse. The project will serves approximately 50 youth per year and will includes activities centered on prevention and cultural intervention services for youth after school at their youth center. The youth program operates from the perspective that if youth have a positive, strong identity they will value themselves, their families, and their communities and that these will serve as protective factors that prevent substance abuse or suicide.
Gerald L. Ignace Indian Health Center
The Gerald L. Ignace Indian Health Center's Youth Empowerment Program cultivates awareness and provides education on substance abuse and suicide prevention through program activities for youth ages 7-24 years. The program uses a strengths-based approach to promote leadership skills, support family engagement, and increase resilience and self-esteem for Native youth through prevention, cultural identity, self-acceptance, and empowerment by means of our program activities that incorporates the importance of a holistic approach to health and wellness. The Youth Empowerment Program achieves these goals through: (1) a weekly after school youth center focusing on academic support, culture, expressive art, fitness, nutrition, and prevention activities and messaging; (2) monthly teen services and quarterly gatherings; (3) monthly family engagement night; (4) youth and parent/guardian prevention and educational trainings utilizing the QPR and SOS evidence based programs; (5) annual family oriented suicide and substance abuse prevention events; (6) youth and teen summer camp programs; (7) classroom suicide prevention education utilizing the Signs of Suicide (SOS) model at a local Native American School; and (8) participation in professional suicide and substance abuse local coalitions and community events.
Indian Health Board of Minneapolis
The Indian Health Board of Minneapolis is providing culturally sensitive healthcare for the urban American Indian community in the Twin Cities since 1971. Funding is used to re-indigenize behavioral health services by integrating local Native drumming and singing with mental health and chemical dependency services. The project promotes Native youth and family wellness with traditional drumming and singing programs. The project has quarterly hand drum-making workshops and drumming groups that end with a celebration for the youth drummers and their families. Along with the drumming/singing, language and traditional teachings are used for optimal teaching of lessons, as well as other activities including drum stick making and drum painting. The Drum Teachings for Success program has been wildly successful,in getting more than 600 hand drums out to the community and serving more than 2,000 people over the course of the project.
Native American Community Health Center – Phoenix
The NATIVE HEALTH project focuses on Urban Native American youth, ages 10 to 24 years old. The program currently provides substance abuse and suicide prevention services designed to assist and educate youth, families and community members to reduce methamphetamine use and suicidal ideation and acts. Part of the project programming includes the Native STAND curriculum, which places an emphasis on healthy lifestyle changes, family strengths, community identity and cultural sense of belonging, based on common traditional Native American values and beliefs.
Native Americans for Community Action, Inc.
The Native Americans for Community Action (NACA) project focuses on delivering clinical behavioral health services to individuals, families and couples to reduce the incidence and risk of suicide and substance abuse/dependence. The project accomplishes this by addressing and treating the underlying mental health issues that lead to these problems, as well as use interventions to address these issues directly. The project trains clinicians entering the mental health field (psychotherapists) to do this work, particularly with a Native American population – creating a greater number of culturally competent clinicians to assist Native Americans with behavioral health issues. Additionally, the project provides a psychoeducational group to help teach adolescents to access and address strong emotions, using music as an aide.
Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest, Inc.
The Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest, Inc. (NARA) has created a suicide prevention network by linking outreach, prevention, intervention and postvention services. NARA incorporates Oregon Tribal Based Practices to deal with issues such as alcohol, drug use and suicide through an indigenous approach. The project serves urban American Indian youth and young adults ages 10-24 who live in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area, and any referred youth and young adults from the Oregon Nine Tribes. The project provides concentrated QPR and ASIST training, adoption of Tribal Based Practices designed to facilitate caring connections for at risk youth, and facilitates access to immediate care when needed.
Nebraska Urban Indian Health Coalition
The purpose of the “Soaring Over Meth and Suicide” (SOMS) project is to promote early intervention strategies and implement culturally appropriate positive youth development programming to reduce risk factors for suicidal behavior and substance abuse. The SOMS project utilizes evidence-based and community-based approaches culturally tailored to build resiliency, promote positive development, and increase self-sufficiency behaviors among AI/AN youth in the urban Omaha metro area.
Nevada Urban Indians
Nevada Urban Indians, Inc. project promotes positive AI/AN youth (ages 6-24) development and family engagement through the implementation of early intervention strategies to reduce risk factors for suicidal behavior and substance abuse. The project achieves this by providing safeTALK and ASIST trainings to the community focused on suicide prevention, $pending Frenzy financial literacy workshops for youth specifically developed for the Native American community, a 12-Step/Medicine Wheel Wellbriety course developed by White Bison, Inc. to assist Native American youth struggling with substance abuse issues, Family Nights which promote local tribal cultural elements and this year we are focusing on traditional language classes, presentations to the community on how best to work with Native American youth, as well as screenings provided by project staff to Native American youth to determine substance abuse and suicidal risk.
Phoenix Indian Center
The Phoenix Indian Center project, Culture is Prevention: Building Resiliency in Urban American Indian Youth project aims to reduce the stigma related to suicide, reduce substance abuse, including opioid and prescription drug use, and increase resiliency and positive development of urban living American Indian youth ages 11-18 years old. This project emphasizes that culture is a preventive thread and resiliency factor for urban living youth. Through the implementation of community-based dialogue and programming the interventions include activities that support social and emotional needs of targeted youth to foster resiliency and resistance to drugs. We collaborate with several community based organizations, schools and our local Indian Health Service hospital to create a robust program, implementing evidence based curricula and effective practice programming. With over seventy years of service, the Phoenix Indian Center has strong relationships within the American Indian community and a network for partners for a continuum of services.
San Diego American Indian Health Center
The San Diego American Indian Health Center addresses high local rates of methamphetamine and other addictive substance use by developing a comprehensive and culturally respectful recovery-oriented system of care integrated throughout all aspects of the health center’s 4-prong approach: (1) prevention and early intervention programming for youth and adults; (2) clinic-based screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment; (3) substance abuse counseling and outpatient treatment; and (4) aftercare and recovery support services that are culturally appropriate. This program builds on best practices developed during the MSPI demonstration pilot project by providing annual Wellbriety training for community members to start additional peer-led recovery and aftercare support groups utilizing the White Bison Medicine Wheel and the 12-Steps programming.
Seattle Indian Health Board
Seattle Indian Health Board’s (SIHB) project cultivates youth self-sufficiency, promotes community engagement in methamphetamine and suicide prevention, engages in cultural/traditional practices through SIHB’s Traditional Medicine Program, and offers space for healing and creative expression among youth and young adults in King County. As an Urban based program serving a highly diverse Native population in King County, the SIHB project aims to honor culturally and tribally diverse perspectives within the community and implement a robust substance misuse prevention initiatives that are meaningful and useful among Native youth.
South Dakota Urban Indian Health, Inc.
South Dakota Urban Indian Health, Inc. (SDUIH) continues to expand and improve the program’s medical and behavioral health integrative model of care for suicide and methamphetamine use, prevention, intervention and postvention for youth, adults and families in urban Indian communities (seven county catchment area) in and near Pierre and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. SDUIH focuses on warning signs, risk factors and protective factors. They continue to expand their prevention and intervention services with youth in two facilities including Sioux Falls Juvenile Detention Center and Summit Oaks, a Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facility in Sioux Falls to provide bullying, suicide, drug use prevention, and awareness education. SDUIH provides extensive cultural services to improve behavioral health outcomes including Lakota/Dakota/Nakota language class, Therapeutic Coffee and Crafts, Inipi, Drum Group, and other special events.
United American Indian Involvement, Inc.
The United American Indian Involvement, Inc. (UAII) has developed its WIND Project to enhance and expand services to American Indian and Alaska Native youth ages 14-24, and their families residing in Los Angeles County. This project offers culturally relevant services to implement prevention and early intervention strategies for reduction of risk factors related to suicidal and substance use disorder behaviors by promoting healthy lifestyles, positive youth development and family engagement. The WIND Project administers depression and substance use screenings, intervention, treatment, referrals to IHS YRTC facility, and educational/cultural workshops to family and community members. UAII also co-facilitates an annual GONA event for youth.
