Wednesday, January 15, 2025
1/15/2025
The Indian Health Center of Santa Clara Valley proposes the Instilling Wellness Through Workforce Development program in order to increase the capacity of the local service system to use data-driven approaches to create and implement effective substance use prevention programming and policies for high-risk, urban American Indian and Alaska (AI/AN) youth age 9-20 in Santa Clara County. Santa Clara County, California, is home to the largest population of AI/AN in the San Francisco Bay Area. Due to the Relocation Program in the 1950s and 1960s and overall emigration to urban centers, there are over 180 tribes represented in the county. Santa Clara is also the ancestral homelands of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe and the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. This unique population has experienced a lasting legacy of cultural loss as a result of historical and intergenerational trauma. Poverty, mixed with the lack of cultural resources, contributes to AI/AN youth being at particularly high risk for substance abuse. Instilling Wellness will develop and increase Indian Health Center’s data infrastructure and capacity to better inform substance abuse prevention through partnership with the State Epidemiological Workgroup (SEOW), and the development of a local Tribal Epidemiological Workgroup (TEOW), Community Coalition, and Youth Advisory Groups. Instilling Wellness will also provide AI/AN youth with SAMHSA developed and recommended culturally-based best-practice model for AI/AN youth substance abuse prevention, the Gathering of Native Americans (GONA), adapted to include economic development strategies. This intervention will simultaneously address poverty and workforce development while bolstering cross-cultural protective factors that prevent substance abuse and increase overall wellness. Instilling Wellness Though Workforce Development will review, document and disseminate data on AI/AN youth substance use in the local community: write an Epidemiological Profile, collaborate with the California State Epidemiological Workgroup, and collaborate with local Youth Councils and a Community Coalition of regional partners. Further, IHC will provide the GONA to 265 local AI/AN youth over the course of the project. The GONA will be supported with individualized work experience projects, monthly programming, and case management-oriented job coaching. Program outcomes include the development of local infrastructure to develop data-driven planning approaches, including quarterly meetings of the TEOW, Youth Council and Community Coalition, a completed Epidemiological Profile, two annual GONA’s (one for youth 14-17 and another for transition aged youth 18-20), increases in cultural connectedness, job preparedness, positive prevention social networks, and hope for the future as measured in pre- and 6-month post-surveys.
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).