Sunday, June 1, 2025
6/1/2025
Catawba Nation Native Public Health Resilience Planning - The Catawba Nation Public Health Resilience Planning project will serve the Catawba Nation community. The Tribe currently has approximately 3,800 citizens nationwide, approximately 700 living within the Reservation boundaries and approximately 1,968 within South Carolina and seven counties in North Carolina. Our geographic catchment area includes York, Chester, Lancaster, Fairfield, Kershaw, and Union counties in South Carolina and Mecklenburg, Gaston, Union, Catawba, Cleveland, Rowan, and Cabarrus counties in North Carolina. What we now understand as social determinates of health have always been a significant challenge throughout the history of the Catawba Nation. The Catawba Nation experience high rates of extreme poverty, low educational attainment, higher crime rates, significant substance misuse, and mental health challenges. The Catawba Nation also faces high rates of chronic disease. Public health concerns that involve maternal and infant health and wellbeing are also prevalent within the Catawba Indian Nation. These include barriers to breastfeeding, pregnancy and postpartum complications, and post-partum mood disorders. Over the last several years, the Nation has emphasized the development of programs addressing the social determinates of health and public health needs. Currently, the Nation has already developed a behavioral health department, a health promotion and disease prevention program, and a maternal and infant home visiting program. These are important existing capabilities, which paired with the Nation’s grant management experience, make the Nation primed to pursue further development of a comprehensive Public Health Department. Despite all of this, we are still lacking a full understanding of the public health needs of our community and a strategic direction to inform the proper development of a holistic Public Health Department. This funding will support our efforts to perform an extensive community health assessment that will guide the development of a comprehensive strategic plan for the development of a comprehensive Public Health Department. For this reason, we have chosen to focus on EPHS #1 - Assess and monitor population health status, factors that influence health, and community needs and assets. We will be performing an extensive community health assessment during the project period. This will include primary and secondary data collection, community asset mapping, organizational readiness assessment, data analysis, and data dissemination. We will then use the findings of this community health assessment to formulate a community health improvement plan. This will include forming a health advisory board, completing a SWOT analysis, set priorities, completing a workforce calculator assessment, completing a capacity and cost assessment, coordinate and target resources, and develop policies. Through the funding provided by this grant, the Catawba Indian Nation will be able to complete the planned steps to properly assess the health of the community and develop a plan to launch a comprehensive Public Health Department that is prepared to address the needs of the Nation.
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).