Sunday, May 11, 2025
5/11/2025
Pee-wo': Yurok Collaborative Opioid Response - The Yurok Tribe has been working to address substance use in its community via its Yurok Wellness Courts (YWC) for the last decade. A collection of wellness based court contexts in which the focus on recovery and not incarceration plays the biggest focus. As different substance use epidemics bring new challenges to the community, the Wellness Courts are always on the lookout for culturally relevant and holistic opportunities to address these issues. Opioid use has been one of the most challenging epidemics to deal with given that pain medications were being overprescribed in the community and to tribal members at an alarming rate alongside negotiating the “what is mine is yours” perspective on medicine sharing. The Yurok Tribe has an established organizing platform via its Yurok Wellness Coalition Team with partners within the tribe and in the community in fields like healthcare, workforce development, social services, and planning. As the Yurok Tribe sees its community gripping with the social and emotional costs of opioid use at its various stages, the Tribe wishes to address this complex issue via a range of mitigation activities and hopefully, the Pee-wo’:Yurok Collaborative Opioid Response, can be one of the those activities. The YWC will also be forming a collaboration with the Center for Court Innovation to provide expert support in all three areas of the grant to address the unique challenges that the Yurok Tribe faces due to its rurality. The YWC will increase public awareness about culturally-appropriate and family centered opioid prevention, treatment and response practices in the community. The plan of action is to collaborate with the local school districts on an awareness raising project utilizing elders in the community, school site staff, and high school students. Two indigenous students (of any Tribal background) from each of the participating districts will submit applications to become oral historians/teachers and will work with school site staff and elders to create school appropriate presentations to deliver to peers and the community on opioid use, prevention, and MAT. The YWC will develop its support teams to better empower AI/AN families in the area in addressing the opioid crisis. The YWTC is one step in building those support teams but the YWC will need more staff to directly create those support teams. By recruiting and hiring full time staff members as an Outreach Specialist and a Caseworker. They will be helping coordinate awareness raising activities in the community/local organizations and be part of a support team that connects families with resources in the area in terms of Opioid related issues and accessing MAT. The YWC will be utilize its collaboration with the Tribal Justice Exchange and its Caseworker to reduce unmet treatment needs and opioid related deaths in its community through the use of MAT. By establishing a comprehensive list and understanding of the newer and potential local MAT resources and the potential for collaboration across MAT providing services and organizations that seek to increase access to MAT, the YWC can improve its long form organizing to address the Opioid epidemic. The YWC’s Caseworker will be supporting families and individuals in accessing MAT in the community. The sheer remoteness and lack of resources in the immediate area of the Ancestral Territory necessitates collaboration and a focus on direct service.
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).