Online Program

326588
Community Building: Healthy Leadership Camps with Pine Ridge Native American Youth


Monday, November 2, 2015 : 1:30 p.m. - 1:50 p.m.

Emily Whitney, PhD, MCHES, Department of Health Education and Health Promotion, University of Wisconsin La Crosse, La Crosse, WI
Keely Rees, PhD, MCHES, Health Education and Health Promotion, University of Wisconsin La Crosse, La Crosse, WI
Anders Cedergren, PhD, CHES, Department of Health Education and Health Promotion, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, La Crosse, WI
Annette O'Hern, School District of LaCrosse, School District of La Crosse, La Crosse, WI
Elizabeth Arnold, MPH, Global Partners, Gundersen Medical Foundation | Global Partners, La Crosse, WI
background: Community led projects are complex and multifaceted.  It is imperative to understand community leadership structures, community-based politics, as well as other key networks. When relationships are properly established communities can be empowered. For example, adolescents in Pine Ridge Indian Reservation seek opportunities for leadership related to life skills and health status to improve overall quality of life.  Youth in Pine Ridge reservation experience higher rates of poverty, depression, diabetes, and mental health disparities. This presentation discusses the nature of creating sustainable partnerships, culturally competent interventions, and involving youth from one community to implement camps for peers in Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

theoretical basis: Pine Ridge elders and youth described a sense of powerlessness or not having control of their destiny. Thus, Capacity Asset Building and the Community Empowerment Model drove this partnership as these models are a means to sustain their own interventions.    

intervention:  Various La Crosse partners with youth and Elders of Pine Ridge developed and implemented leadership training camps. The camps provide hands on experiential learning for students. Youth learned how to conduct needs assessments, identify priority areas, establish plans to address issues and present to the Elders.

implications for practice: By working with a community instead of for a community through the use of community empowerment models effective and sustainable partnerships can be developed. This intervention has further developed into sustainable programming that better assess and measure long-term health disparities as well as improved health outcomes using indigenous resources and collaborations.

Learning Areas:

Administer health education strategies, interventions and programs
Diversity and culture
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Program planning
Public health or related organizational policy, standards, or other guidelines
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
Explain the importance of using community building and empowerment models to create sustainable partnerships. Differentiate the utility of a using a community empowerment model over a community organization model. Identify key aspects of working with youth to plan and implement leadership camps.

Keyword(s): Native Americans, Partnerships

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have a PhD in health education and health promotion and have been working with community-based partnerships for eleven years.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.