Between Two Worlds: Impacts of COVID-19 on the AI/AN Health Research Workforce.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating global and national impacts including major loss of life, economic downturns, and ongoing impairments to mental and physical health. Conducting health research has remained a priority and has helped mitigate some of the COVID-19 devastation; however, challenges to research have arisen due to COVID-19 prevention strategies and changing community priorities for research. The purpose of this article is to focus on a critical piece of the health research process with American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities and the AI/AN health research workforce. Throughout this editorial, we provide challenges faced while conducting research with AI/AN communities during the COVID-19 pandemic including changes to research processes and ongoing research studies, taking on multiple roles in academic spaces, and mourning for continuous community loss while continuing to conduct research that may benefit AI/AN communities. Using a strengths-based lens, we also provide examples of flexibility, adaptation, and resilience in the face of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Centering Indigenous Knowledges and Worldviews: Applying the Indigenist Ecological Systems Model to Youth Mental Health and Wellness Research and Programs.

Globally, Indigenous communities, leaders, mental health providers, and scholars have called for strengths-based approaches to mental health that align with Indigenous and holistic concepts of health and wellness. We applied the Indigenist Ecological Systems Model to strengths-based case examples of Indigenous youth mental health and wellness work occurring in CANZUS (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and United States). The case examples include research, community-led programs, and national advocacy. Indigenous youth development and well-being occur through strengths-based relationships across interconnected environmental levels. This approach promotes Indigenous youth and communities considering complete ecologies of Indigenous youth to foster their whole health, including mental health. Future research and programming will benefit from understanding and identifying common, strengths-based solutions beyond narrow intervention targets. This approach not only promotes Indigenous youth health and mental health, but ripples out across the entire ecosystem to promote community well-being.

Native Spirit: Development of a culturally grounded after-school program to promote well-being among American Indian adolescents.

Culturally grounded after-school programs (ASPs), based on local cultural values and practices, are often developed and implemented by and for the local community. Culturally grounded programs promote health and well-being for American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) adolescents by allowing them to reconnect to cultural teachings that have faced attempted historical and contemporary erasure. This article is a first-person account that describes the development and implementation of a culturally grounded ASP, Native Spirit (NS), for AI adolescents (grades 7-12) living on a Southwest urban-based reservation. NS, a 13-session culturally grounded ASP, was developed by an academic-community partnership that focuses on increasing cultural engagement as a form of positive youth development. Each session was guided by one to two local cultural practitioners and community leaders. The development of the NS program contributed to an Indigenous prevention science that emphasizes the positive impacts of Indigenous culture and community on health and well-being. The use of the ASP format, in partnership with the Boys & Girls Club, increased the feasibility of dissemination and refinement of the NS program by tribal communities and organizations.