Seva Foundation: Native American Community Health Program

Sign-up | Donate Now | Give a Gift | Sign In

Programs

Sight

Native Health

Native American Community Health Program
Healthy People, Healthy Cultures, Healthy Land

A PREVENTABLE EPIDEMIC: Type II Diabetes rates are higher for Native Americans than any other group in the world, affecting more than 50% of adults in many communities. Like the worldwide smallpox eradication efforts that inspired Seva’s beginning, the diabetes epidemic and other chronic health issues in Indian Country disproportionately affect vulnerable, low-income people and are largely preventable.

INDIGENOUS SOLUTIONS: Because these destructive diseases stem from rapid changes to both society and the environment, solutions must holistically address these factors. Seva’s Native American Community Health (NACH) Program builds the capacity of Native American organizations working toward increasing community-based management of disease prevention and health promotion strategies.

In 2009, Seva completed a comprehensive review of our nearly 30-year-long program and adapted our approach. Learn more

Beginning this year, we are taking a new step together with established Seva partners—one Alaskan village-based, one Plains reservation-based, and one urban—with a common mission: recovering traditional food and food practices that have long kept Native people healthy.



An overwhelming half of Alaska Native adults suffer from diabetes with very little food variety or affordability in the remote region of the Pacific Northwest Boroughs. Seva has partnered with Ilinniagvik Attautchikun in restoring a traditional trading camp to prepare and distribute healthful native food staples from 11 salt and fresh water villages on the Kobuk River. Rooted in Inupiaq traditional ways, this inclusive program engages elders to teach children and teens to hunt, harvest and produce traditional goods to strengthen and maintain health and self development.	Among the Ihanktonwan Dakota (Yankton Sioux), community members identify that there is a critical lack of access to health activities and natural foods that prevent diabetes, obesity and other chronic stress-related diseases. Seva’s partnership supports Brave Heart Society in efforts to recover existing indigenous knowledge on community gardens and the tribal value of food sovereignty—the ability to feed oneself. It also supports family group circles to discuss the impact of food on tribal survival for the generations to come.	The Bay Area Native American community faces disproportionately high rates of diabetes, heart diseases, obesity and other health issues. In local Alameda County alone, 6.9% of deaths among Native Americans were directly due to diabetes. Seva’s partnership will kick-off Intertribal Friendship House's intergenerational gardening activities and nutrition and cooking classes, and connect these food practices with a weekly aerobic and dance class. This holistic approach to health is a strategy to reconnect the urban community with traditional health systems, thereby building pride and self-sufficiency.