Blackfeet Community College Center for Culture as Medicine

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Native American communities in Montana experience severe health disparities, including mental health diseases that result in an all-cause death rate that is 58% higher than the white rate. Funding of Blackfeet Community College (BCC) by a previous NARCH grant produced research results that indicate the degree of connection of Blackfeet community members to Blackfeet community and culture positively affects their health (1). In light of these findings, the overarching goal of the current Blackfeet NARCH application is to improve the mental and physical health of the Blackfeet Nation by the development of the BCC Center for Culture as Medicine (CCM). We believe investing in developing Native researchers as well as research infrastructure at BCC can have a significant and lasting effect on the health prospects of future generations of Blackfeet people. Identifying the sources and causes of reservation health disparities and reducing or eliminating those causes through research, mitigation, remediation, and public education can have significant impact on health. The proposed project leverages the previous NARCH efforts over the last several years to train BCC faculty in biomedical research and to build the college’s research infrastructure, including a state-of- the art research laboratory at BCC that has enabled our students and faculty to perform a broad range of research projects. Importantly, the previous funding began to develop a research culture at BCC and the Blackfeet community. In this proposal, we utilize this developing research culture and our previous results to inform a proposed intervention, further develop the research interest in BCC students and faculty, explore new traditional approaches to improve health, and develop a sustainable BCC-CCM. In order to accomplish the goals of improving the health of the Blackfeet Nation and to develop the BCC- CCM, we propose to achieve the following specific aims: 1. perform interventions informed by our previous research to improve the physical and mental health of the Blackfeet Nation. 2. generate new results that will inform future interventions that will respond to health concerns among the Blackfeet Nation. 3. build the capacity of health equity research at BCC by developing a sustainable BCC-CCM. These aims will be accomplished through the proposed BCC-CCM, Administrative Core, a student and faculty research development project, an intervention based on enhancing connection of reservation participants to community and culture to improve physical and mental health, and a pilot project to explore how the Piikani language can positively affect health.