Native Health Initiative: Connecting health professions students and tribal communities to address health inequities

To both address the health inequities faced by American Indians (AI) in North Carolina, and to utilize the unique resources within this population to address health concerns, the Native Health Initiative (NHI) was created in 2004 as a partnership between health professions students and North Carolina's American Indian communities. NHI operates on four principles: (1) educating future health care providers on AI health issues, (2) tribe-directed, sustainable projects (3) empowering American Indian youth, and (4) supporting cultural exchange. The lack of an infrastructure connecting universities and AI communities, historical scars from exploitation by academia, and lack of AI health data were initial barriers. However, using a community-oriented model, allowing tribal leaders to develop NHI and its projects, while providing logistical support to aid their efforts and ideas, these hurdles were overcome. NHI's work involves research on health issues relevant to North Carolina's tribes (e.g. factors behind the high rates of teen pregnancy), health interventions in tribal communities (e.g. health education on diabetes and diet), and collaborative efforts with other organizations (e.g. working through entities on the UNC-CH campus to create a permanent home for NHI, a medical school course in AI health, and undergraduate service trips to AI communities). Through two years of work it is both clear that there are substantial, un-addressed health inequities in the AI population and that collaborative efforts can begin to meet these needs and “heal” the scars left from the research paradigms of the past.