Message from the Director
As we are all doing are best to navigate the realities of Covid-19, there are a number of disadvantaged groups among us for whom this struggle is amplified by already existing health disparities. Near the top of this list, if not at the top, of these highly vulnerable groups are American Indians. They are already more prone to serious health conditions (heart disease, diabetes, autoimmune disorders), which make them highly susceptible to respiratory illness (the primary killer of Covid-19). When these conditions are combined with the understaffed and under-resourced Indian Health Service, this makes for a deadly perfect storm.
Our Center has tracked, for multiple decades, another serious problem among reservation-based American Indians – adolescent substance use. Their rates of use have outpaced all other ethnic/racial groups of adolescents in the U.S. What is already a pressing public health issue for American Indian communities nationwide is likely only to be compounded by the current pandemic. As medical facilities become even more stressed, as already dire economic conditions worsen, and as Native families deal with yet another trauma – the loss of family members, we fear that substance use problems will worsen. As a nation, as practitioners, as a community of researchers, and as fellow brothers and sisters on this struggling planet of ours, we must do all we can to lessen the impact of this frightening disease on the most vulnerable among us.