2019 Annual Report

"To Be Healthy"

Mino-bimaadizi - Ojibwe

Zaní - Lakota

Dyuwʾáashgìitsị - Keres

Chánah - Navajo

Achukmaka - Choctaw

ᏅᏩᏙᎯᏯᏛ - Cherokee

Sokimmohsi -Blackfoot

-pėhévomóhtahe - Cheyenne

xes - Salish

-unhiyo- - Oneida

Anneéleete - Crow

Tsaayuna - Shoshoni

"We need to heal together."

- Chief Arvol Looking HorseMnicoujou Lakota

19th Generation Keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe

Joshuaa Allison-Burbank (Acoma Puebloand Diné)Justin Begaye (Diné)Christine DaleySean M. DaleyRyan GoecknerJordyn Gunville (Mnicoujou Lakota)River Gunville (Mnicoujou Lakota)Jason Hale (Prairie Band Potawatomi)Christina Haswood (Diné)Sumanth Jain-WashburnCharley Lewis (Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute andDiné)Crystal Lumpkins (Choctaw)Joseph Pacheco (Cherokee of Oklahomaand Quechua of Bolivia)Dasy ResendizLuke Swimmer (Eastern Band Cherokee)Brooks Youngmark

To collaborate with AmericanIndian peoples, Nations,

communities, and organizations toimprove the physical, mental,emotional, and spiritual well-

being of American Indiansthroughout the United Statesthrough quality participatory

research and education.

Our Mission:

Who is AIHREA?

In 2019, we continued to award our regularscholarships for students wanting to work withAmerican Indian communities, pursuing degrees inthe fine arts, or Native students in the University ofKansas Language Acquisition Program.

This year's scholarship recipients included:

We also awarded a number of scholarships at ourpowwows! Those recipients included:

For more information about AIHREA, Inc.,scholarships, visit www.AIHREA.org/Scholarships!

AIHREA, Inc. Scholarships

Ponka-We Victors

Violet Sutton

Aspen BellNovember Powwow Scholarship Contestants 

•   Aspen Bell(Eastern Shoshone, Northern Arapaho)University of St. Mary, BS in Nursing

    •   Violet Sutton (Cherokee Nation)Haskell Indian Nations University, BA in Behavioral Psychology

    •   Ponka-We Victors (Tohono O'odham Nation of Arizona, Ponca Nation ofOklahoma)Creighton University, PhD in Interdisciplinary Leadership

•   Abrielle Laughter

•  Kayla Bointy•  Calvin Smith•  Michael Redbear•  Troy Watterson•  Elias Her Many Horses

•  Elena Johnson•  Xavier Littlehead•  Ok-tw'sha Roberts•  Brennah Wahweotten

Art & Culture Extravaganza

Thank you to all of the attendees at our 4thAnnual American Indian Art and CultureExtravaganza! We worked hard this year toexpand on last year's success and offer some newactivities. We offered brief lectures on severaltopics, including Cherokee stickball and waterrights issues in Indian Country. In addition tocrowd favorites like the medicine wheel makingworkshop that debuted in 2018, attendees hadthe opportunity to make new arts and crafts thisyear including parfleche-style earrings andheaddress ornaments. Moreover, in partnershipwith the Honors Program and Community-Based Learning at Johnson County CommunityCollege, we collected donations for the AIHREAChristmas Drive to benefit children from theCheyenne River Sioux Nation.

The 13th Annual AIHREA O.N.E. Powwow was another massive success for us in 2019.We continued with our focus on health education, a shift away from our primary carescreening clinic that we made in 2018, that included adding new activities thatfocused on unintentional injuries, e-cigarettes and vaping, and sun damage, amongothers. In addition to dance contests, we hosted a student art contest that awarded a$500 scholarship. With the help of generous support from the Professional BullRiders, we were able to rent a mechanical bull and offer free rides for powwowattendees. We also announced the return of our popular and successful smokingcessation program, All Nations Breath of Life!

O.N.E. Powwow

In 2019, we held our Etkwagēk Mawttėshnowėn "Fall Gathering" Powwow inMayetta, KS. Held at the Boys & Girls Club of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, wehosted a great group of community members who were able to learn more about usand our research.

We brought our health education activities as well, including new topics like Missingand Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, domestic violence, and foster care.

Etkwagēk Mawttėshnowėn

"Fall Gathering" Powwow

In 2019, our partners at the Center forAmerican Indian Community Healthwere awarded an Engagement Awardfrom the Patient-Centered OutcomesResearch Institute that began theAIHREA Native Research AmbassadorsProgram. This program's primary goalis to train individuals working in Nativecommunities in the principles ofcommunity-based participatoryresearch, working with academicresearchers, and grant writing.

To help design and recruit for theprogram, we enlisted the help of ourCommunity Advisory Board made up ofAmerican Indian community membersfrom around the country (pictured onthe right).

Our 20 participants kicked off theprogram in November with a trip toKansas City. During their visit theylearned about the beginning stages ofthe grant writing process, includingidentifying problems, creating teams,and finding different types of grants.

They continue to participate online withan expected graduation date inNovember of 2020.

Native Research

Ambassadors

Program

Joel Begay, MPHJoshuaa Allison-Burbank,

ABD CCC-SLP

Kelly Berryhill, MPHMarjorie "Chip"

Bird Necklace

Cory Deer Nathan Hale

Lisa Little Axe, BS Priuscilla Martin

AIHREA Native Research Ambassadors

The Center for American Indian Community Health (CAICH) fromthe University of Kansas Medical Center and the Center forAmerican Indian Studies (CAIS) from Johnson County CommunityCollege are merging and moving to the College of Health at LehighUniversity, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania!  The two Centers willbecome the Institute for Indigenous Studies and will be co-directed by the two directors from CAICH and CAIS.  ChristineMakosky Daley, PhD, MA, SM, will lead the research endeavors ofthe new Institute and Sean M. Daley, PhD, MA, will leadeducational programs.  The team will continue their community-based participatory research efforts in reducing health disparitiesfaced by American Indian communities and will broaden theirefforts to include other indigenous communities in the Americasand globally.  Our educational focus on pipelining Indigenousstudents into college and beyond will also continue, now focusingon bringing students to Lehigh University.  The College of Healthplans a certificate in Indigenous Health at the undergraduate leveland will bring that focus into newly developed graduate programsin the coming years.  Our partner non-profit organization, theAmerican Indian Health Research & Education Alliance, Inc., willalso be moving to Pennsylvania and will continue its scholarshipprograms and health and educational programming.  We areexcited to announce our plans for the future and look forward tobroadening our efforts!

Lehigh University College of Health

Institute for Indigenous Studies

Lehigh University College of HealthLehigh University College of Health

To all of the community members who have helpedmake the last 14 years completely unforgettable, wewould like to extend a tremendous thank you to each andevery one of you! It has been our pleasure to get to knowyou all and we appreciate your willingness to welcome usinto your communities across Northeast Kansas and theGreat Plains. Without you, it would have been impossibleto have even a fraction of the success we've had as anorganization. As we begin this next chapter for AIHREA,we look forward to staying in touch and the newopportunities for continued partnerships that this movewill bring! Thank you!

Thank You!

Implementation of

All Nations

Breath of Life

Over 2019, we have been working tobegin expanding our successfulculturally tailored quit smokingprogram All Nations Breath of Life. Wewill soon begin training a number ofcommunity partners to teach them howto run the program.

Each of our community partners willrun 18 groups of 10 smokers throughthe program. While administering theprogram, they will have theopportunity to modify certain aspectsof the ANBL curriculum to better fittheir communities.

For this program we plan to work with:

Two reservation communities:Prairie Band Potawatomi NationCheyenne River Sioux Tribe

Two urban communities in:KansasSouth Dakota

To learn more about the program or ifyou are interested in bringing theprogram to your community, contact theproject manager Joe Pacheco atjpacheco@kumc.edu.

Telephone

All Nations

Breath of Life

In 2018, we announced the completionof the pilot test for our telephone-based version of our culturally tailoredquit smoking program, All NationsBreath of Life.

We will soon be testing if the programis a better quit smoking program forAmerican Indians than other programs.

In fall 2020, we will begin recruitmentand are looking for 500 participantswho are American Indian, age 18 orolder, and who smoke at least onecigarette per day.

Program Components:

Weekly, individual telephonecounseling with a Native facilitatorEducational curriculumMotivational text messages fromyour facilitator between phones callsParticipant incentives to rewardparticipants for reaching milestonesin their quit smoking journey

To learn more about the program or tobecome a participant, email the projectmanager Luke Swimmer atl365s821@kumc.edu.

Ryan Goeckner, MA, is a doctoral student in cultural anthropology at The Ohio State University.  He has worked on a variety of project since joining the AIHREA team in 2014.  Involvement in these projects and his experiences working in Native communities influenced his interests in contemporary American Indian identity, religious expression, and activism.  During his master's research, he focused on the importance of Lakota oral and religious traditions in resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline for water protectors from the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe.  He plans to focus on the use of resistance rides (such as the Dakota 38+2 and Bigfoot Memorial Rides) in contemporary Lakota activism for his dissertation research.  He continues to work with AIHREA as our social media coordinator and in his (limited) free time co-hosts the podcast Religiously Literate, a podcast exploring religious expression aroundthe world.

Showcasing AIHREA's Doctoral Students

Jordyn Gunville, MPH, is an enrolled member of theCheyenne River Sioux Tribe and a PhD student in HealthPolicy and Management at the University of Kansas MedicalCenter where she also received her Master of Public Health. She is a research associate and project manager at the Centerfor American Indian Community Health, where she hasworked on numerous research projects, including maternaland child health, mental health, health literacy, smokingcessation programs, educational grant writing training forcommunity members, breast cancer research and education,and more. Jordyn is a Zegar Scholarship recipient at JohnsHopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she isreceiving additional training for public health professionals

working in American Indian communities. Jordyn’s research interests include maternaland child health, health service research, and population health with the goal of gappinghealth disparities by addressing the social determinants of health.  She is also the proudmother of three children; JorJa (6), Jarvis (3), and Jurnee (2).

Charley Lewis, MPH, is Navajo and Utu Utu Gwaitu Paiute from Benton California.  He has worked at the Center for American Indian Community Health (CAICH) since 2011 and has been involved with various projects focused on tobacco cessation, environmental health, health literacy, and health education. He is currently leading a project that aims to learn more about alternative tobacco product (e-cigs, smokeless tobacco, hookah, etc.) knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors among American Indian college students using focus groups and surveys.  He is also a first year PhD student in the Health Policy and Management Program at the University of Kansas Medical Center.  While in the PhD program, he hopes to focus on the role that health policy plays in tobacco cessation among AmericanIndian populations.

Joe Pacheco, MPH, is an American Indian-Latino, whosegoal is to continue with research aiming to find ways toreduce health disparities among American Indiancommunities.   He is interested in reducing the burden ofcommercial tobacco use through community-basedparticipatory research methods. He also has over nine yearsof public health experience conducting prevention andimplementation research. He obtained a Master of PublicHealth with a concentration in environmental health fromthe University of Kansas Medical Center. While obtaining hisMPH, he worked as a Research Assistant at the Center forAmerican Indian Community Health. Joe has worked on avariety of projects including a Safe and Healthy Homesservice project, a Tribal college tobacco and behavior study,

and an individual web-based smoking cessation program for Tribal college students.Currently, he is in the dissertation proposal phase of his doctoral training whilecontinuing to work with American Indian communities to reduce barriers, improveaccess to care, and develop new and innovative interventions to reduce healthdisparities. Post-graduation, Joe aims to apply for postdoctoral fellowships that willallow him to continue his research in the realm of reducing health disparities amongAmerican Indian communities and hone his skills to become an independent researcher.

College Students and

Alternative Tobacco

Last year we completed a project to help us understand what American Indiantribal college students know and think about alternative tobacco (AT) products,including electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), commonly referred to as"vapes." To do so, we completed a series of focus groups with current/formeralternative tobacco users, current/former smokers, and never users of either tounderstand their knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors related toalternative tobacco. We found that:

Among tribal college students:

They believe that younger people are more likely to use ENDS, while olderpeople are more likely to smoke cigarettes or use chewing tobacco.They do not believe American Indians are being targeted in AT advertising.They believe that AT products are easily obtained.ENDS and chewing tobacco are the primary AT products known.They believe that AT products should not be used for traditional tobaccopractices.They believe that there should be programs to help American Indian collegestudents quit smoking.

Other findings include:Among current/former AT users, young men considered themselves addicted,while young women did not.Current/former smokers cited family influence as a major factor in why theystarted smoking.Never users had some knowledge of policies surrounding tobacco products andwanted legislation for AT product use in public places.

The logo for the new Institute for Indigenous Studies (IIS) in the College of Health at Lehigh University wasdesigned by Luke Swimmer, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian Nation of NorthCarolina, and a Research Scientist II in the IIS.  The design in the center is a basket weave symbolizing the

interconnectedness of all Indigenous peoples of the Americas – North, Central, and South.  The main colors– green and gold – are earth tones, representing a connection to the Earth and good health. They also pair

well with Lehigh University’s official colors – brown and white.     

The gold rectangle in the center of the design represents the Institute for Indigenous Studies.  It alsorepresents the connection the IIS has to all the Indigenous communities with which it works.

 The larger gold circle around the main basket design symbols signifies family and

community ties, as well as protection and understanding.  

The small dots on the outer edge of the design represent people and they are arranged in a larger circlesymbolizing equality, where no one person is more important than another.

Publications & Presentations

Daley CM, Hale JW, Bointy S, Berryhill K, LeMaster J, Gajewski BJ(2019) Native American Weight Loss Movement: Pilot Test of aCulturally Tailored Weight Loss Program for American Indians. Journal of Health Disparities Research & Practice 12(1):1-18.

Daley SM (moderator), Gunville J, Hale J, and Lewis C (panelists)(2019) “American Indians 101: What We Know, What We Don’tKnow, and What We Need to Know,” United Nations Association ofKansas City, National Archives, Kansas City, Missouri 

Daley SM (2019) “The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Womenand Girls (MMIWG) Movement: An Introduction to a Modern NorthAmerican Epidemic.”  Fall Faculty Research Symposium, JohnsonCounty Community College, Overland Park, Kansas.

Lewis CS, Gunville JA, Goeckner RT, Chase B, Clark L, He J, Choi WS,Daley CM (2019) An exploration of prescription medication misuseamong American Indians in the Midwest.  Journal of HealthDisparities Research & Practice 12(1):151-158.

Gunville, J (2019) The Development of a Prenatal Care HealthLiteracy Instrument for American Indian Mothers. HeartlandConference on Health Equity and Patient Centered Care. OverlandPark, KS.

Gunville, J, Daley CM, Williams J, Choi WS (2019) Outcomes from theDevelopment of an American Indian Maternal and Infant HealthCross-Sectional Survey: Understanding Birth Experience and InfantHealth. Annual Meeting of the American Public Health Association:Philadelphia, PA

Hale, J, Gunville, J, Lewis,C, Daley, SM, Choi, WS, Daley, CM (2019)Telephone Based All Nations Breath of Life Smoking CessationProgram for American Indians. Annual Meeting of the AmericanPublic Health Association: Philadelphia, PA Lumpkins, C(2019) Middle School to Medical Practice - A Discussionabout the Importance of Including Health Equity Curricula intoPreMedical, Medical and Continuing Medical Education. HeartlandConference on Health Equity and Patient Centered Care. OverlandPark, KS.

Pacheco J, Lewis C, Pacheco C, Hale J, Williams J, Daley SM, DaleyCM, and Choi WS (November 2019) “Internet All Nations Breath ofLife (I-ANBL): A College Student Engaged Development of anInternet-Based Smoking Cessation Program.”  Annual Meeting ofthe American Public Health Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

CONTACT INFO:info@aihrea.orgwww.aihrea.org