Kodiak Area Native Association - Domestic Violence Prevention Program - The Kodiak Area Native Association (KANA) is proposing programming to meet the objectives under the Domestic Violence Prevention (DVP) program. Through the activities described in this application, KANA proposes to improve coordination with the community coordinated response (CCR) group, increase educational awareness about the negative health effects and social burden of domestic and sexual violence, expand victim advocacy services, integrate evidence-based and community-based culturally appropriate practices to facilitate social and emotional well-being of victims and families, and develop a formal plan to ensure sustainability beyond the life of the project. The proposed programming focuses on several different subpopulations, including Native youth and residents living in Kodiak’s rural village communities. KANA intends to use DVP resources to implement a variety of activities to address the aforementioned goals. These include improving the capacity of the community CCR and Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT), providing training on intimate partner violence and related topics for the general community and service providers, supporting broad-based public health messaging, improving the rate of domestic violence screening within the medical care setting, and provide training to expand treatment services. In addition, KANA proposes to collaborate with community partners to provide stabilization packages for victims and their families, to support the restart of victim support groups, and train outreach and partner staff as facilitators and implement the A Window Between Worlds trauma-informed, alternative art therapy program. To accomplish these activities, KANA’s DVP project will seek to pool resources with other outreach and education programs, such as the SAMHSA-funded Native Connections and newly proposed Substance Abuse Prevention, Treatment, and Aftercare and Suicide Prevention, Intervention, and Postvention projects. These resources will be used to expand KANA’s Prevention Department by hiring additional Prevention Specialists who will act as generalists and be cross-trained in multiple models and subjects to carry out a variety of project activities, an Education & Training Coordinator who will be responsible for overseeing work related to policy/procedure development and community/staff training, and a Health Promotion Coordinator who will lead the development and dissemination of public health messaging, promoting activities and events, and managing external programmatic communications. KANA will also seek to leverage its longstanding relationships with external partners, such as the Kodiak Women’s Resource and Crisis Center, Kodiak Island Borough School District, Kodiak Island Housing Authority, and the 10 Federally recognized Alaska Native Tribes of the Kodiak region. These partnerships have been a core aspect of KANA’s service delivery for many years, including the community prevention and education efforts of KANA’s Domestic Violence Prevention Initiative (DVPI) project over its 2015-2021 duration. Many of the activities proposed in this project are based on lessons learned during the DVPI project and planning discussions with community partners. As a result, KANA is well-positioned to implement the proposed activities, with a high degree of buy-in from community partners on a subject all parties agree is critical to improving the overall well-being of the Kodiak region and its various communities. Through the proposed project, KANA will address both the IHS-determined Goals and its internally created Objectives to achieve the purpose of the DVP program by increasing community understanding and awareness of domestic and sexual violence, intimate partner violence, human trafficking, and other related topics, as well as improving the region’s ability to respond to incidents, provide treatment and advocacy, support victims and their families.
