Wednesday, April 2, 2025
4/2/2025
Tribal Practices to Wellness - The Northern Arapaho Tribe seeks a Cooperative Agreement from the CDC for a Tribal Practice to Wellness project (TPWIC) for its tribal Wind River Family and Community Health Care Systems (“WRFCHCS”). The Wind River Family and Community Health Care System is the Public Health Authority of the Northern Arapaho Tribe and the provider of direct health care services through an Indian Self-Determination and Education Act contract with the Indian Health Care Services. The TPWIC Office at WRFCHCS will partner with all the WRFCHCS service providers and with the other tribal programs of the Northern Arapaho Tribe including the Northern Arapaho Language and Cultural Commission, whose members will also service on the Advisory Council for the project, and with the WRFCHCS special diabetes/fitness program, and Good Health to Wellness project of our population health division. This TPWIC office will become a distinctive service office within the WRFCHCS to enable continued development of ‘two-eye seeing’ practices to wellness begun under a previous TPWIC cooperative agreement with CDC (CDC-RFA-DP18-1812PPHF18). The ‘lessons learned’ from that project inform the strategies and activities selected in this new RFA with expansion of cultural trainings to all tribal programs/services personnel. Delivery of tribally determined components of cultural teachings and practices that focus knowledge of family heritage history, language and indigenous ways of healing and being, will increase cultural connectedness, increase social connectedness, and support wellness and resilience. The Northern Arapaho Tribe, WRFCHCS knows that to increase understanding of tribal practices will strengthen physical and mental health, wellbeing, tribal identity, and connection to better support the work tribes and their members do reduce the marked health disparities faces on the Wind River Indian Reservation. The health disparities faced by the Northern Arapaho Tribe are significant, higher that national figures and highest in the State of Wyoming. The Wind River Indian Reservation (WRIR), home to the Northern Arapaho Tribe, has the lowest average of death in all of Indian County at age 53. Those who abuse drugs and alcohol die even younger with an average age of death of 32 despite the WRIR having the lowest consumption of alcohol in the state of Wyoming. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) scores rank at the top end of the scale due to this mortality and the trauma of early death within families and the reason those deaths occur. Trauma is a major cause of chronic disease as is the poverty found at Wind River where the health disparities of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer strike down those who do not die due to the injuries that are a major cause of death (homicide, suicide, and substance involved motor vehicle crashes.) Research has shown that Tribal practices that build resiliency and connections American Indians to community, family, and culture, can over time, can reduce risk factors for chronic disease. However, many people for whom alcohol/drugs has become their culture are unfamiliar with who they really are. Many others have lost family over time who did not or could not convey the strength and healing that our culture, language and traditions contain. This Tribal Practices approach provides for shared knowledge between western providers of health care and traditional and ceremonial Elders. Through consultation, peer group, family heritage and language learning activities, they will connect cultural teachings to health and resilience strengthen social connectedness, wellbeing, and enable intergenerational learning that supports wellbeing and resilience. $150,000 per year is being requested for a five-year program total of $750,000.
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).