Gathering Grounds
Gathering Grounds is Seven Directions’ ongoing Indigenous Community of Practice. Here you will find videos and links to past sessions, which focus on different areas of opioid overdose prevention, culture as prevention, and harm reduction efforts.
Presented by Kevin English, DrPH
“This presentation will focus upon currently available data sources that can be leveraged to characterize the burden of opioids among American Indian/Alaska Native populations Opportunities for opioid-related data and surveillance enhancement and primary data collection will also be discussed.”
In this session, tribal public health professional Clinton Alexander and professor Dr. Brenna Greenfield discuss their collaborative work piloting an opioid overdose fatality review and other community-driven projects.
This presentation highlights important areas of concern related to the opioid crisis in Indian Country and the tragic increase in opioid overdoses and deaths in Arizona.
Presented by Danica Love-Brown, PhD, and Danielle Eakins, PhD
American Indian and Alaska Native communities have long traditions of assessing and evaluating community-based approaches to improve health and well-being and efforts to address issues and concerns for individuals and the community. In February 2023, Seven Direction published the Indigenous Evaluation Toolkit, which draws from these traditions, along with American Indian and Alaska Native community best practices, to support programs in incorporating Indigenous evaluation approaches into their work. In partnership with Dr. Joan LaFrance and based on her work with Richard Nichols, MA, and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (2009), this Toolkit that Seven Directions has developed expands on and specifies techniques used by Indigenous evaluators and communities. It provides an easy-to-apply, step-by-step guide that can help support health teams in developing their own evaluation approach. In this session, together with contributions from our partners at the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board and Cherokee Nation Public Health, we will share and learn core Indigenous evaluation values and how they can be translated into implementation and support of opioid overdose prevention and other health promotion efforts.
Indigenous Evaluation with the Seven Directions and Tulalip Tribes’ ODMAP Team
Presented by Chairman Nickolaus D. Lewis, Lummi Nation and Danica Love-Brown, PhD
Nearly four years ago when Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board completed our 2019 “Tribal Opioid Response: National Strategic Agenda,” we could never have imagined that we would be entering a 3-year pandemic; that substance use and overdoses would increase significantly; or that Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, would become a major threat to the health and well-being of our communities. Our communities have shared their stories with us, and we have heard them. We heard the pain and heartbreak about the losses in our communities. The concern about behavioral health provider shortages and provider burnout. The lack of culturally-specific substance use treatment and recovery programs especially for youth. The interest in gathering and sharing resources and best practices. The need for increased funding and policy changes to collectively and strategically address this crisis. In response, NPAIHB Chair Nickolaus Lewis began asking HHS Region 10 last year to support a Northwest Tribal Opioid Summit in 2023. What became strikingly clear to Chair Lewis through his requests to HHS, and meetings with other Tribes, is that a national Tribally-driven Opioid summit with Federal, Regional, and State decision-makers is needed to address this crisis comprehensively.