• Four Native-American communities participate in this project: Pueblo of Laguna, Pueblo of Acoma, To’Hajiilee Navajo, and Shiprock Navajo.
• Two SBHCs are community partners in the project: University of New Mexico’s ACL Teen Centers and Shiprock Teen Life Center.
• Community organizers help youth and communities develop skills to advocate for positive health policy changes at the local, tribal, state, and federal levels of government through YAGs (Youth Advisory Groups) and SHACs (School Health Advisory Councils). (See below for link to the “Native American Youth Impact Policy” article)
• Youth and communities advocate at the state and tribal levels for legislative initiatives like Native H.O.P.E., a Native American youth peer-to-peer and community suicide prevention training that the Laguna YAG lobbied for at the 2007 state legislative session. (See below for link to the Native H.O.P.E. brochure)
• The Project continues to work on raising the awareness of the need for Medicaid outreach in tribal communities to help build the capacity of SBHCs in Indian Country.
• Project TRUST is a New Mexico partnership developed with UNM, the NM Department of Health, the New Mexico Alliance for SBHC Policy Project, Navajo Area IHS, the Coalition for Healthy and Resilient Youth, and the Northwest Champions for School-Based Health Care, as well as others in Indian Country when they began to question why evidence-based behavioral health services were not meeting the needs of Native American youth, their families and communities. This lack of services was evidenced by behavioral health disparities, and high rates of youth suicide and underage drinking. This workgroup became Project TRUST, which stands for Truth, Responsiveness, Understanding, Self-Determination, and Transformation.
  
  A series of community meetings was conducted in Indian Country that included conversations with traditional healers in order to find out why Native American youth experience health disparities. More information was needed from existing behavioral health research and literature to address these concerns as well. Project TRUST brought all these components together, and its findings are contained in a written report that supports the idea that the behavioral health disparities experienced by Native American youth are related to disparities in exposure to violence and trauma. Further, current policy and behavioral health practices must be transformed to meet the behavioral health needs of Native-American youth. For more information, click on the links below for the full report that documents three policy and provider recommendations to improving behavioral health services.

http://hsc.unm.edu/chpdp/Assets/Projects/Assets/TRUST_Executive_Summary_May08.pdf
http://hsc.unm.edu/chpdp/Assets/Projects/Assets/TRUST_Report_May08.pdf

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