Thursday, November 21, 2024
11/21/2024
American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) people face significant health disparities, which is further jeopardized by a shortage of AIAN healthcare professionals. AIANs are at higher risk for health problems, experience higher rates of death, and have a lower life expectancy than the general population. This is further complicated by persistent health professional vacancies at tribal health clinics. AIAN health professionals are more likely to work with AIANs than their peers but they are disproportionately under-represented in health professional programs. The total number of medical student seats and medical schools in the United States have increased since 1980, yet this has made no difference for AIANs in medicine. Decades of efforts to diversify US medical schools and the physician workforce have produced increases for every racial and ethnic minority, except AIANs. It is time to re-imagine how to recruit, train, and graduate more AIAN health professionals who will serve AIANs. Oregon Health & Science University Northwest Native American Center of Excellence (OHSU NNACoE), Washington State University Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine (WSU), University of California Davis School of Medicine (UC-Davis), and the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB) have created a robust health education coalition - three medical schools, 43 tribal nations, and two tribally-focused non-profit organizations - to launch "Reimagine IndianS into MedicinE" (RISE), a multi-sector project to address the abysmal workforce shortages in tribal communities throughout the Western Region of the Indian Health Service. RISE will comprehensively and sustainably address the healthcare needs of AIAN people by augmenting the number of AIANs who enter the health workforce and serve AIAN people, building upon the success of existing programs and relationships. The RISE evaluation team will assess the effectiveness of programs using rapid cycle quality improvement principles. The goals we will accomplish in this proposal are to: 1) Identify and inspire AIAN youth to see themselves as future health professionals and recruit them to health professions enrichment programs. 2) Enrich and mentor AIAN college students to develop a highly competitive applicant pool for health professions programs, particularly medicine. 3) Recruit, retain and graduate AIAN medical students to promote and provide high quality, safe, culturally responsive and accessible healthcare to AIAN people. Our approach is two-pronged: (1) RISE will offer highly tailored enrichment and mentoring programming directly serving more than 500 AIANs at the college and post-baccalaureate levels over the project period. These programs will increase GPA and test scores and will improve the quality of applications for AIAN health professional school applicants. (2) RISE will locate, inspire and recruit students with the educational potential for health professions careers using a proven multi-faceted approach: innovative social media outreach, tribal higher education offices, high school counselors, pre-health advisors at key universities, and outreach through in-person events. RISE anticipates no fewer than 11,600 AIANs contacts and 1,150 recruits per year, benefitting AIAN programs across the United States.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
