Oklahoma City Area Funded Projects 2009-2014

Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma

The Absentee Shawnee MSPI project, Following in Our Footsteps, provides suicide and methamphetamine prevention outreach and education at health fairs, schools, and community events. The project utilizes cultural and educational activities such as Native American storytelling, arts & crafts, dancing, sweat lodge ceremonies, Red Road to Recovery, THRIVE, creative arts programs (music), and positive youth activities to promote healthy life choices and positive decision-making skills. The project employs Meth Inside Out; Through the Diamond Threshold: Promoting Cultural Competency in Understanding American Indian Substance Misuse; Face2Face Meth; and the Lifelines curriculum. The program promotes prevention though billboards with pictures and prevention messages.

Cherokee Nation

The Cherokee MSPI project utilizes SBIRT (Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment) and Motivational Interviewing (MI) to prevent and treat suicide and methamphetamine use in the community. This project works to improve the depression, suicide, and substance abuse screening protocol for patients using clinic services, while also improving the monitoring and tracking protocol for patients referred to substance abuse treatment.

Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes

The Cheyenne & Arapaho MSPI project developed the Save a Life project to address methamphetamine use and suicide in the community. Save a Life has been extended to also include bullying prevention in the local schools. The project established a crisis line that is managed by a licensed therapist which assists community members in accessing treatment and intervention for suicidal ideation. The project offers regular group therapy sessions as well as a variety of holistic approaches to improving health, including sessions with traditional healers, sweat lodges, smudging, traditional ceremonies, and traditional crafts.

Chickasaw Nation Department of Family Services

The Chickasaw MSPI project aims to raise community awareness of suicide and methamphetamine use through a variety of events, including prevention activities to educate youth on substance use, bullying, and suicide. Public service announcements spread prevention and resource awareness messages through billboards and newsletters. The project also provides Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) and safeTALK trainings and incorporates cultural practices such as storytelling, traditional crafts, and traditional games into the programming.

Choctaw Nation

The Choctaw Nation MSPI project, Live Choctaw, A Life Worth Living, trains individuals in the community, including members of faith-based organizations, in Question, Persuade, and Refer (QPR) suicide intervention. The project utilizes the local faith leaders to coordinate and host community events highlighting mental illness, suicide warning signs, and available resources. Developing partnerships with the local community service coalitions has also enabled Choctaw Nation MSPI to address methamphetamine use. Through the partnerships, the community gains information about substance abuse and prescription lock boxes, and participates in the Drug Take-Back day. Local businesses have been utilized to promote gun safety and suicide prevention by aiding in distributing gun locks and suicide awareness materials. The project has also held events in cooperation with the local school systems. Organizations such as ‘Stand for the Silent’ and ‘Rachel’s Challenge’ to encourage students to speak for those victimized by bullying and to seek help for those who maybe be considering suicide.

Citizen Potawatomi Nation

The Citizen Potawatomi Nation MSPI project, the FireLodge Youth Program, focuses on integrating Native American cultural components and activities across all areas of programming to address suicide within the community. The project hosts a bullying prevention week with prevention activities at eight different local schools, as well as community events to educate youth on the connection between bullying and suicide. Youth are actively involved in addressing methamphetamine use and suicide within the community through participation in meetings of the Tribal Youth Advisory Board. The project also offers Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST) trainings through a partnership with the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse.

Consortium Against Substance Abuse (CASA)

The Consortium Against Substance Abuse MSPI project uses the Matrix Model to provide intensive outpatient care for methamphetamine and other substance use issues to all Tribes in the CASA’s service area. It does so with support from the Family Court Judge and the Caddo County Child Welfare Department of the Oklahoma Department of Health Services. Since implementation of the Matrix Model, the majority of clients who have completed the program are living drug-free lives. Many of the patients have also been able to regain custody of their children, previously taken away due to substance abuse. In addition, the project delivers methamphetamine education presentations at community and youth events.

Creek Nation

The Creek Nation MSPI project utilizes collaborations, evidence-based practices, social marketing, and outreach to address methamphetamine use and suicide in the community. The project coordinates with the Tribal Lighthorse Police to improve response time for suicidal individuals, provides Question, Persuade, and Refer (QPR) gatekeeper trainings, and participates in National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) New Hampshire’s Connect training and the project will develop a suicide postvention plan. The project raises awareness through the HOPE Walk for suicide prevention, and through various school presentations and afterschool programs.

Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma

The Eastern Shawnee MSPI project aims to prevent methamphetamine use and suicide in the community through partnerships and the incorporation of cultural tradition in youth events. The project partners with Red Willow Counseling Services to provide equine therapy and counseling for no charge to the community. They also hold traditional healing classes and positive prevention gatherings, as well as Question, Persuade, and Refer (QPR) gatekeeper trainings for Elders and the broader community.

Haskell Health Center

The Haskell Health Center MSPI project provides substance abuse and suicide prevention and treatment activities through mental health services, education, and treatment to tribal members with a focus on classroom retention rates. The project works in collaboration with Haskell Indian Nations University to deliver lectures on substance abuse and suicide prevention to students and conducts depression, suicide, and alcohol abuse screenings through the University Health Center. Counseling and culturally based treatment resources are available during screening programs, and subsequent services are available through the Center’s tele-behavioral health services.

Kiowa Tribe

The Kiowa MSPI project, Kiowa Teen Suicide Prevention (KTSP), aims to raise awareness, reduce stigma be a resource to the community and ultimately contribute to a reduction of deaths by suicide in Oklahoma. KTSP facilitates American Indian Life Skills (AILS), and “Motherhood Is Sacred and Fatherhood Is Sacred” classes. KTSP administers the Signs of Suicide screening, offers Question, Persuade, And Refer (QPR) trainings throughout the community as well as hosts and participates in events that promote suicide prevention and awareness.

Indian Health Care Resource Center of Tulsa

The Indian Health Care Resource Center of Tulsa MSPI project, Strengthening Our Native Youth (SONY), aims to improve the health and enrich the culture of American Indian children in the community. Through SONY, the American Indian Life Skills (AILS) curriculum is taught to children and adolescents from several Tribes in school and community settings to reduce the risk of suicide. The project has also requited students in the community to form the Native Nations Youth Council, which regularly hosts events, distributes materials, and speaks to youth one-on-one about the dangers of methamphetamine, and promotes suicide prevention activities.

Kickapoo Nation

The Kickapoo MSPI project addresses methamphetamine use and suicide in the community through a variety of practice-based curriculums, along with traditional healing practices and cultural practices, such as sweat lodges, smudging, ceremonies, and arts. The project also organizes substance abuse prevention symposiums, works with Healing to Wellness courts, provides assistance to schools, and collaborates with the Prairie Band Potawatomi Tribe to deliver health education and increase awareness.

Northeastern Tribal Health System/Modoc and Ottawa Tribe

The Northeastern Tribal Health System MSPI project, STEP UP (Sustaining Tribes, Educating People, Understanding Prevention), promotes methamphetamine and suicide prevention activities through community and youth engagement. The project focuses on providing various support groups for adults, community outreach, and providing a case manager for the tribal facility patient population. The case manager helps link individuals to resources provided in the community that will aid in stabilizing their lives.

Oklahoma Area Indian Health Service

The IHS Oklahoma City Area Office MSPI project aims to prevent suicides and substance abuse in the Oklahoma City Area through the implementation of telebehavioral health and telepsychiatry services. The project provides telehealth services to multiple clinics with high need and limited resources. The project also collaborates with the State of Oklahoma Suicide Prevention Committee in order to ensure that MSPI and Tribal suicide prevention efforts are recognized at the Annual State Suicide Prevention Conference.

Oklahoma City Indian Clinic

The Oklahoma City Indian Clinic MSPI project, Support and Knowledge for our Youth (SKY), provides outreach and education to the community on suicide and substance abuse. The project builds on established community and tribal partnerships and collaborates with the Domestic Violence Prevention Initiative (DVPI) project to expand services and offer educational programming. The project also hosts suicide, bullying, and methamphetamine awareness events and provides Question, Persuade, And Refer (QPR) trainings. In addition, mental health and substance abuse screenings, mentoring services, and crisis intervention services are also provided by the project.

Osage Nation

The Osage MSPI project aims to provide suicide and methamphetamine prevention, treatment, and follow-up services through community events and evidence-based care. The project hosts a number of events including the Red Ribbon Powwow, Red Ribbon programs in schools, sobriety walks, and Drug Endangered Children training. In addition, the project conducts trainings for Question, Persuade, and Refer (QPR) and Motivational Enhancement Therapy/Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (MET/CBT), and implements the American Indian Life Skills (AILS) program with youth. Behavioral health services are provided through partnerships with local agencies, hospitals, clinics, and schools.

Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma

The Pawnee Nation MSPI project addresses methamphetamine use and suicide in the community through a variety of prevention activities. The project hosts health fairs, a ribbon walk, and an employee prevention walk, and distributes substance use awareness material to community schools. To increase coordinated services for communities to respond to methamphetamine and suicide crisis, the project provides Question, Persuade, and Refer (QPR) training, a Crisis Team Committee and other trainings and intervention programs. The project incorporates cultural activities into its programming and events, including dancing, singing, drumming, traditional crafts, and traditional games.

Ponca Tribe

The Ponca Tribe OO-KEE-HEE MSPI project provides a community-focused response team to educate American Indian youth and young adults on the dangers of methamphetamine use and implements suicide prevention and awareness programs. Youth between ages 5 and 15 participate in enrichment programs to improve self-esteem and discipline and to encourage healthy behaviors. Youth groups have organized the MSPI Media Youth Club, which views films and discusses youth empowerment, and Friday Teen Nights, which applies the American Indian Life Skills (AILS) Curriculum lessons. The MSPI Team, which includes a licensed counselor and a licensed psychologist, creates care plans and coordinates services for children and families of children who are involved in drug use, and/or experience anxiety or suicidal ideation.

Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation

The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation MSPI project addresses methamphetamine use through an outpatient treatment group, continuing care groups, transportation to out of state residential treatment facilities, and Alcohol and Drug Information School. The program collaborates with the Healing to Wellness courts of both the Prairie Band and the Kickapoo tribes. Transportation support is provided to families attending the Rosebud Methamphetamine Treatment Program’s family week. Educational information is disseminated at a number of community events to increase awareness of the risks of methamphetamine use and treatment services offered by the program.

Quapaw Tribe

The Quapaw Tribe MSPI project provides community education and awareness relating to suicide and substance abuse prevention at local schools, community events, and health fairs. The project incorporates Gathering of Native American (GONA) presentations and provides training for staff members in Question, Persuade, and Refer (QPR) and Applied Suicide Skills Intervention Training (ASIST). The project also partners with local law enforcement agencies to develop suicide packets to give to local responders.

Seminole Nation of Oklahoma

The Seminole Nation of Oklahoma MSPI project focuses on integrating methamphetamine and suicide prevention, education, intervention, and treatment services within the community. The project utilizes Medicine Wheel teachings, wisdom from Seminole Elders, and the Gathering of Native Americans (GONA) curriculum to provide culturally appropriate services for clients. Collaborations with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Seminole Nation Housing Authority provide additional access to resources and services for members of the community targeted by the MSPI project.

Seneca-Cayuga Tribe

The Seneca-Cayuga MSPI project aims to reduce the burden of methamphetamine and suicide ideation on the community. Trainings are held to expand staff knowledge on methamphetamine and suicidal behavior. Prevention efforts include an annual prevention youth summer camp, methamphetamine education, and events focused on bullying and suicide prevention in local schools. Behavioral health screening services and treatment programs are provided through project funding.

Wyandotte Nation

The Wyandotte Nation MSPI project provides community trainings on methamphetamine and suicide prevention using the Question, Persuade, And Refer (QPR) model, including trainings tailored for Elders. The project provides depression screenings for youth engaged in prevention activities. Positive youth and community activities are hosted to promote methamphetamine and suicide prevention, including the Stomp Out Meth 5k race and a Wyandotte Elementary artwork competition. The project regularly participates in health fairs and powwows. The Wyandotte MSPI project and the Eastern Shawnee MSPI program joined together to host the first Challenge Day for Wyandotte Public Schools, an event focused on supporting youth through love and connectedness.