Despite the challenges of limited staffing and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) Colorectal Cancer Control Program – a five-year (2020-2025) grant funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – has achieved significant progress in increasing colorectal cancer screening rates across Alaska.

Over the past five years, the average screening rate among Tribal health organization partners increased from 46% to 62%, representing a 35% improvement. This progress has contributed to a meaningful reduction in colorectal cancer incidence and mortality among Alaska Native people. Colorectal cancer screening is recommended for Alaska Native people 40 and older, and all adults ages 45 and up.

The program supported seven Tribal health organizations across the state by providing technical assistance, provider education, and ongoing support through community calls and peer learning opportunities. These efforts created space for partners to learn from one another and share best practices. The program also assisted with mass mail-outs of at-home stool test kits, distributed culturally relevant education materials, and promoted consistent, collaborative engagement to expand access and awareness.

Additional efforts included addressing the colorectal cancer screening referral backlog at the Alaska Native Medical Center (ANMC), which improved access to colonoscopy services and helped reduce the burden on clinical staff.

Culturally tailored outreach was a significant success. Alaska-themed colorectal cancer screening media were developed and translated into Yupik, helping to engage rural and Alaska Native communities in a meaningful way.

Additionally, the Colorectal Cancer Program also focused on policy updates, which included updating and revising the ANMC Colorectal Cancer Screening Guidelines (2021), supported the passage of an Alaska Federation of Natives-approved resolution (#21-14) to promote screening and address cancer disparities, and submitted a letter of support for proposed changes to Title 7 of the Alaska Administrative Code to expand Medicaid coverage for colorectal cancer screening.

Together, these efforts have advanced health equity and strengthened Alaska’s statewide approach to colorectal cancer prevention, early detection, and improved patient outcomes.

To learn more about the ANTHC Colorectal Cancer Control Program, visit: https://epi.anthc.org/crc/

If you are 40 and would like to schedule a colorectal cancer screening, speak to your primary care provider, or call the ANMC Colorectal Cancer Screening Clinic at 907-729-4444. The clinic will work with you and your provider to schedule the appropriate referral.

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Tribal Success Stories, Public Health Programming Supported by the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona, Inc., Tribal Epidemiology Center, 2020 – 2024, includes sixteen Tribal projects and four ITCA TEC projects. This book covers a small sample of ITCA TEC work with Tribes. All ITCA TEC funds support Tribes in the Indian Health Service Phoenix Tucson Service Areas through training, technical assistance, and small grants.

View the Booklet here: https://simplebooklet.com/tribalsuccessstories

 

The Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council is a Tribal organization that serves more than 100,000 American Indians (AIs) in the States of Montana, Wyoming, Shoshone Bannock of Idaho, and the Piikani Nation of Canada. The RMTLC is dedicated to improving the health, economic development, and education for Tribes and their members through a variety of programs, policy recommendations, and Tribal Leaders meetings. Since 2005, the RMTLC has housed the Rocky Mountain Tribal Epidemiology Center (RMTEC), which serves AIs in Montana and Wyoming (Billings Area). As one of twelve Tribal Epidemiology Centers (TECs), the RMTEC works in partnership with local, area Tribes to improve the health and well-being of their Tribal community members by offering culturally competent approaches to reduce health disparities AI populations face.

Each year, the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council (RMTLC) hosts an annual conference in Billings, Montana for Tribal Health Departments, Directors, Tribal Councils, Urban Organizations, public health professionals, relatives, partners, Indigenous Advocates, and others who serve American Indians (AI) in Montana and Wyoming. As a regional Tribal Public Health event, this year’s theme was Strengthening Indigenous Well-Being: A New Era in Tribal Public Health, August 14-15, 2024. A variety of topics and sessions featured Tribal Public Health professionals, the sharing of Tribal best practices, and Indigenous-led wellness activities. Our region continues to celebrate our resiliency, our culture, and strengthen AI Health Equity. This year, RMTLC was pleased to offer several pre-conference sessions focused on building capacity and strengthening collaborations. Through conversations, partnerships, and working groups with Tribes, the RMTEC organized a one-day workshop titled, Indigenous Data Warriors Training (IDWT), on August 13, 2024.

 

Valuing our region’s diverse workforce that serve our Tribal Nations, the IDWT had more than 50 attendees, in-person and virtually. The following topics covered were:
 

• Fundamentals of Epidemiology
• Fundamentals of Descriptive Statistics
• Hot Topics: Data Decolonization and Reducing Racial Misclassification
• How to Manage a Dataset (Data Management 101)
• Fundamentals of Data Visualization
• What Does Data Mean to you? Indigenous Data Sovereignty

 

All attendees were provided with course materials and supplies. In addition, attendees were provided with the option for Continuing Education Units (CEUs). Attendees were also provided opportunities to reinforce concepts learned through interactive activities and networked with fellow regional data warriors. Understanding that travel expenses may be limited, the RMTEC offered travel scholarships to attendees along with the opportunity to attend the full conference.

Besides regional attendees, the IDWT event had individuals from Arizona, Nebraska, and Minnesota register. One IDWT attendee mentioned, “This training was appropriate for beginner/intermediate levels of understanding. A lot of ground covered, and they were able to answer my questions. I can tell they are passionate about this.” Another IDWT attendee stated, “The delivery of information was engaging and left me feeling empowered with my ability to manage data.” “I liked that other TECs joined in. It shows collaboration.” As a thank you to the attendees for taking time, the RMTEC provide attendees with Indigenous Data Warriors power banks.

For future trainings, many IDWT attendees would like a second training that builds off the skills learned and hands-on practice to build a dashboard. The IDWT was a months long process to identify foundational data training topics and to identify presenters/speakers. Rather than seek assistance externally, the RMTEC reached out to fellow TECs to share their expertise with our attendees. Those who work with AI/AN data, understand the data challenges such as—data access, representation in data, and the importance of data sovereignty. We appreciated the presenters/speakers for taking the time and effort to carefully develop course materials that have laid a foundation for our data warriors. The skills learned through this training have increased an attendee’s understanding about data, where to locate data, and how to interpret data. The skills that will be useful for developing Tribal data initiatives. Data is medicine. Data empowers Indigenous people to make change.

Indigenous Data Warriors Training

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In June 2024, National Coordinating Center for TECPHI (NCC) staff members participated in a Digital Storytelling workshop. This workshop was offered to staff at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), the parent organization of the Alaska Native EpiCenter and the NCC, as part of a partnership between ANTHC and Creative Narrations.

Participants in this workshop honed their skills in telling personal health stories via video. Hearing directly from individuals, hearing their voices, their values, their perspective of relevant health problems and their solutions can help us better understand fighting chronic disease within the world of Tribal communities.

Stories serve an important role in NCC national evaluation: to highlight program success, emphasize indigenous core values and knowledge, show the reach and impact of the NCC and TECPHI, and to connect grantees who are working on the various public health strategies across Tribal health organizations.

View Mishelle’s digital story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUBabuDQ2MU

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The Northwest Tribal Epidemiology Center (NWTEC), housed within the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board (NPAIHB), is preparing to launch Beta testing of the Northwest Tribal Data Hub application (Data Hub) to an initial cohort of Northwest Tribes during the summer of 2024. This milestone will signify the culmination of three and a half years of planning, learning, and developing the foundational infrastructure of the Data Hub. As we near this milestone, NWTEC’s Data Hub team reflects on the successes and lessons learned from this developmental phase of the platform.

What is the Northwest Tribal Data Hub?

At its core, the Northwest Tribal Data Hub seeks to connect Northwest Tribal Nations with their data. When fully developed, the Data Hub will provide Tribes in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington with secure, direct, and easy access to public health data on topics such as demographics, cancer, substance use and overdose, leading causes of death, and other public health issues within their Tribal areas. The Data Hub utilizes data obtained from state and federal agencies, including vital records, disease registries, and health surveys. When possible, the data have been improved for Tribal communities by correcting the misclassification of AI/AN people. Tribes will access the Data Hub through a secure login and can view, interact with, and download data through visual and interactive dashboards. Each Tribe will be able to view key public health indicators for their Tribal service area, state, and the Northwest region.

Building NWTEC’s Data and Tribal Engagement Infrastructure

The Data Hub represents a significant investment in modernizing NWTEC’s data and information technology infrastructure. The initial planning phase included defining our goals and outcomes for the Data Hub, assessing the feasibility of its development, and engaging four Tribes in a proof of concept to test the underlying technology and gauge interest in further development. As part of that planning phase, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud environment emerged as the best platform to host the Data Hub. The first, foundational step of the development phase was to design, build, and test the Data Hub’s security to ensure confidential data are protected and accessible through the data pipeline. With platform’s security developed and tested, NWTEC’s data assets were migrated to a database and formatted to support the analysis and visualization of public health indicators. The data visualization tool, QuickSight, is used to develop interactive dashboards that report key indicators on Northwest Tribes’ priority health issues. The first dashboard to be launched addresses one of the Northwest Tribes’ highest priority issues – drug overdoses.

 

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