Building evidence for cultural interventions to prevent youth substance abuse and suicide risk: The Ellangneq studies

The Ellangneq study is designed to address the paucity of evidence on what are effective interventions with American Indian or Alaska Native youth to address substance abuse and suicide risk (Gone, 2007). Our team of community and university researchers will present a study based upon 15 years community based participatory research (CBPR) with Alaska Native communities to identify an indigenous model of protection from substance abuse. We will describe how we partnered with Native communities to operationalize protective factors from substance abuse and suicide into a cultural intervention for Native youth. We will describe the intervention and present outcome results from two rural Alaska Native communities. This is a first step in developing an evidence based cultural intervention for Native youth.