UIHI TECPHI COMPONENT A - Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI), a Tribal Epidemiology Center (TEC) and division of Seattle Indian Health Board (SIHB), a nonprofit organization and Urban Indian Organization (UIO), requests $596,577 in funding in Year 1 under Component A of the Tribal Epidemiology Centers Public Health Infrastructure (TECPHI) CDC-RFA-DP22-2206 grant mechanism. With this project, we propose to serve a national Urban area in which we are located. For 21 years, UIHI has been designated as 1 of the 12 Indian Health Service (IHS)-funded TECs. While the other 11 TECs serve tribes in their respective regions, UIHI’s target population is national in scope, serving AI/ANs living in urban areas. UIHI serves the national network of 41 Urban Indian Organizations (UIOs) federally funded under Title V of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act. In addition, we have an official service relationship with the Urban Indian Health Network (UIHN), a cross-site nationwide network comprising the 41 UIOs and 50 other urban AI/AN health programs. Together, the members of UIHN serve approximately 2.5 million urban AI/ANs across the country. The purpose of UIHI’s Component A proposal is to reclaim traditional values of data, evaluation, and research to strengthen public health capacity, address health disparities, and promote health resilience in urban Indian communities. Through TECPHI, UIHI will advance our long-term goals of creating public health systems by and for Indigenous people and indigenizing the 10 essential public health services to reflect what AI/AN people need to lead healthy and happy lives. This will produce short-term, intermediate, and long-term outcomes that align with the NOFO’s logic model. The intermediate outcomes we will achieve within the next five years include: 1) Increased TEC, tribal, and UIO capacity to deliver at least 3 of the 10 Essential Public Health Services (our proposal addresses all 10); 2) Increased use of evaluation results for program improvement; and 3) Increased number of success stories disseminated that demonstrate the program’s impact. The UIHI initiative will address Strategies, Focus Areas, and Activities required within this NOFO through the following core approaches: 1. Community Health Profiles for increased access to reliable and quality data on the health status and social determinants of health priorities of urban Indian communities. 2. Trainings and workshops on epidemiology, grant writing, cultural knowledge systems, chronic disease prevention, addressing disease states, Indigenous data collection methodologies, and Indigenous evaluation. 3. Technical assistance in the areas of Indigenous evaluation, data collection, and data usage on a national scale. 4. Internships to train and encourage an AI/AN public health workforce. 5. Community Grants to provide four competitive subawards per year, focused on Indigenous approaches to chronic disease prevention and management. 6. Communities of Practice for authentic gathering, healing, collaboration, and knowledge exchange.
