Flexibility and resilience in equity-centered research: lessons learned conducting a randomized controlled trial of a family-based substance use prevention program for American Indian families.

Meaningful and effective community engagement lies at the core of equity-centered research, which is a powerful tool for addressing health disparities in American Indian (AI) communities. It is essential for centering Indigenous wisdom as a source of solutions and disrupting Western-centric perspectives and inequitable and exclusionary research practices. This paper reports on lessons learned implementing an effectiveness trial of the Thiwáhe Glúwaš'akapi program (TG) program (translated as "sacred home in which families are made strong")-a family-based substance use prevention program-in a post-pandemic era with an American Indian reservation community that has confronted extreme challenges.

Transforming through leadership: a qualitative study of successful American Indian Alaska Native behavioral health leaders.

Background: Effective leadership is vital in the struggle to decrease the behavioral health disparities between the US population and American Indian Alaska Native (AIAN) communities. AIAN communities have a pre-colonization history of highly effective leadership, yet some AIAN leadership traditions have been eradicated through decades of trauma and genocidal efforts. There is a paucity of research on AIAN public health leadership, and most existing research relies on samples of individuals holding leadership positions rather than individuals purposely selected because of their effectiveness.

Colorado Immersion Training in Community Engagement: Because You Can't Study What You Don't Know.

Background: Community engagement (CE)has become a major element in medical research. In alliance with the goals of the Clinical and Translational Sciences Award program, Colorado Immersion Training in Community Engagement (CIT) is a community-campus partnership that aims to introduce an expanded pool of researchers to community-based participatory research (CBPR) and CE.

Objectives: To describe CIT components and preliminary results.

Use of the evidence base in substance abuse treatment programs for American Indians and Alaska Natives: pursuing quality in the crucible of practice and policy.

Background: A variety of forces are now shaping a passionate debate regarding the optimal approaches to improving the quality of substance abuse services for American Indian and Alaska Native communities. While there have been some highly successful efforts to meld the traditions of American Indian and Alaska Native tribes with that of 12-step approaches, some American Indian and Alaska Natives remain profoundly uncomfortable with the dominance of this Euro-American approach to substance abuse treatment in their communities. This longstanding tension has now been complicated by the emergence of a number of evidence-based treatments that, while holding promise for improving treatment for American Indian and Alaska Natives with substance use problems, may conflict with both American Indian and Alaska Native and 12-step healing traditions.

Value of Community Partnership for Understanding Stress and Coping in Rural Yup'ik Communities: The CANHR Study.

Stress and trauma can compromise physical and mental health. Rural Alaska Native communities have voiced concern about stressful and traumatic events and their effects on health. The goal of the Yup'ik Experiences of Stress and Coping Project is to develop an in-depth understanding of experiences of stress and ways of coping in Yup'ik communities.

Reflections on a proposed theory of reservation-dwelling American Indian alcohol use: comment on Spillane and Smith (2007).

In their recent article, N. Spillane and G. Smith suggested that reservation-dwelling American Indians have higher rates of problem drinking than do either non-American Indians or those American Indians living in nonreservation settings.

Mentoring in community-based participatory research: the RCMAR experience.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has been identified as a useful strategy to overcome disparities in minority elders. However, little consensus exists with respect to appropriate CBPR training and mentoring mechanisms. In this paper, we summarize the mentoring activities in each of the six currently funded Resource Centers on Minority Aging Research (RCMAR).

Ethnic minority older adults participating in clinical research: developing trust.

Objective: African American, Latino, and American Indian older adults are underrepresented in clinical research studies. A significant barrier to participation in research is mistrust of the scientific community and institutions. The aims of this article are to discuss the lack of representation of ethnic minorities in clinical research.

Healthy nations: reducing substance abuse in American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

Since 1993, 14 American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) communities have worked diligently to reduce the harm due to substance abuse in their communities. Funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Healthy Nations Initiative I, these communities implemented creative strategies that span the continuum from community-wide prevention, early identification and treatment to aftercare. Drawing upon the unique strengths of their own cultural traditions to find solutions to local substance abuse problems, these efforts have identified important and useful lessons for not only other AIAN communities, but also for sponsors of substance abuse programming in Indian country and elsewhere.