Saturday, December 21, 2024
12/21/2024
The communities involved in this project include: Chenega Bay, Nanwalek, Port Graham, Seward and Tatitlek. All are located within Southcentral Alaska. The Primary Regional Clinic site is located at Northstar Clinic in Seward. Each of the other four communities is considered secondary network spoke sites. Chugachmiut supports a standardized clinic model in each community to increase visiting provider quality of care. Outside of Chugachmiut there is a statewide hub for tribal health care in Anchorage, Alaska consisting of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the Southcentral Foundation. In the Chugach region communities historically subsisted off of the sea. Salmon, seal and many other inter-tidal foods are main parts of the local diets. The Exxon Valdez oil spill greatly impacted this subsistence life and residents began eating a more western diet and the rise of chronic disease like diabetes followed. Over the past many years there has been a noticeable return to subsistence practices. There are general stores in all but Tatitlek and Chenega. These stores do have some healthy choices, but these tend to be fairly expensive. Project challenges/Solutions include: • Patient/participant recruitment and/or retention will be addressed with patient outreach and the use of a village nurse case manager to help in insuring follow up care. • Lack of resources continues to be a challenge and our best option is to control services through data analysis, while also prioritizing community leadership’s requests and carefully growing the program as resources allow. • Remote locations will always be a challenge, but staff can usually connect to sites through telehealth video visits. Multiple in-person visits are planned to each community by our registered dietitian and other providers. • Other - Travel and labs that have to be mailed out to the Anchorage hub can be delayed or canceled due to wind, snow, icing conditions, visibility, volcanoes, avalanches, floods and waves. Weather can change quickly and can surprise pilots and captains when en-route to a community. Information technology connectivity and bandwidth can often have issues due to weather, satellite issues, and tourists overusing limited resources. Our remote clinics are partially dependent on VTC, Zoom, and telemedicine. Chugachmiut's target group is adults with a diagnosis of diabetes. The region that Chugachmiut serves experiences an estimated diabetes prevalence rate of 7.0%. Our target group will be treated per the annually updated Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes published by the American Diabetes Association. Our selected best practice will be Blood Pressure Control, as this measure was one of the only measures that we have seen a worse result in over the last year. This will allow us to continue to build upon the progress we have made in increasing our rates of nutrition and exercise education in past years and also align our goals with the strategic plan laid out by our regions leadership. Other activities that we have planned involving SDPI will include annual health fairs in each community, implementing a plan of use for a digital camera for remote retinal screenings, expanding our point of care testing offerings for routine diabetes related laboratory tests, and continuing our regional step challenges that encourage physical activity.
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).