Copy
View this email in your browser

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation supports expansion of Family Spirit Nurture program

In 2017, Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health launched the Family Spirit Nurture (FSN) home visiting program to evaluate a new approach to preventing early childhood obesity in Native American babies, adding on to the Center’s nationally recognized home visiting model, Family Spirit. Significant results from a randomized controlled trial of FSN were published in JAMA Pediatrics on November 9, 2020, showing that infants whose mothers participated in the FSN program had healthier infant feeding and improved growth status (measured by zBMI) compared to children in the control group. It is the first published report of a home visiting program impacting children’s healthy growth trajectories in the first year of life.  Their results compared to significantly more children in the control group being obese or overweight by age 1, a sad result of widespread food insecurity in many tribal communities that portends lifelong obesity, poor health and chronic disease. Based on this evidence of FSN’s success and with new support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Center is expanding the FSN lessons and program to explore the long-term impact of FSN on children’s healthy weight status through the child's fifth birthday. Additionally, we will examine how water filters, distributed through our COVID-19 emergency water response efforts, impact water and sugary drink consumption. 

Share Our Strength/No Kid Hungry launches $1 million initiative with JHCAIH

We are thrilled to announce a major new partnership with Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign to promote early childhood nutrition and food security among Native American families with young children. Share Our Strength is a longtime supporter of the Center, including providing key funding in the 90s that helped launch the Family Spirit home visiting program, and support in recent years for the expanded Family Spirit Nurture program described above, including adding components to connect families to local healthy food resources and federal nutrition programs (WIC, SNAP, School Breakfast, School Lunch, Summer Feeding). Their No Kid Hungry campaign has also provided critical support for our Center’s distribution of food and wellness boxes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

We are now embarking on a ground-breaking national partnership to further expand and significantly scale FSN to tribal communities across the country. This will include creating a FSN app specially designed to work with Native families to foster connections with food and nutrition resources, as well as a new web-based dashboard of FSN and No Kid Hungry resources, where tribal leaders, home visitors, families and community resource allies can access FSN curriculum, training information, tools and other supportive nutrition and hunger relief resources. Stay tuned for updates!

Interview with Cornell Magdelena, Jemez Pueblo health leader and JHCAIH training program graduate

Building the capacity of Native Americans to lead health care and public health research in their communities is the most impactful way to promote health equity. The Center for American Indian Health’s Scholarship and Training Program provides financial support for Native Americans to come to Johns Hopkins for world-class training in the health sciences, and thanks to many generous donors, has provided scholarships and mentoring to more than 1,000 Native scholars over the past two decades. We are proud to highlight a recent alumnus from our program, Cornell Magdalena, and his work in service to the Jemez Pueblo in New Mexico. 

Cornell Magdalena completed our Public Health Training Certificate for American Indian Health Professionals in 2018 and has worked in the field of public health for over ten years. A proud member of the Jemez Pueblo, he has served his people both in Tribal Government as well as in his current position as Health Advocate with the Jemez Public Health Program. In this interview, Cornell describes the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic in a small tribal community, his role as a leader in public health, and the influence of the Center’s Training Program on his career. 

"Open your heart to the people you serve with dignity and respect. Be professional and personable.  People will see your true self if you get to have a conversation not only about what is going on in this world today, but in order to learn about how you can lend a hand. Share some laughs and surround yourself with positive people that are making great changes in Native communities." — Cornell Magdalena

Read the full interview here.

JHCAIH supporting education about vaccines in tribal communities

Beverly Gorman, a Navajo (Diné) traditional healer, shares a message on the importance of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. This is just one of the ways the Center has helped support education about vaccines in tribal communities.  
Gladys Averill, an elder of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe and grandmother to Dr. Melissa Walls, talks about her experience during COVID-19 pandemic and what she did when she was called to get her vaccine.

Health threats facing Native communities call for culturally grounded solutions

Please click here to read an article in the latest issue of Johns Hopkins Magazine by Sophie Neuner, MD, MPH, a member of the Karuk Tribe and a new faculty member with the Center for American Indian Health. Dr. Neuner strives to address the needs of Native American women and families as an obstetrician/gynecologist and researcher through approaches that are culturally congruent and honor Indigenous sovereignty.

Dedication ceremony for Dr. Victoria O'Keefe as the inaugural Mathuram Santosham Chair in Native American Health

On March 16, we were delighted to hold a virtual dedication ceremony for Victoria O’Keefe, PhD, a member of the Cherokee and Seminole Nations of Oklahoma, as the inaugural Mathuram Santosham Chair in Native American Health at Johns Hopkins University. This faculty leadership chair is named in honor of the Center’s founding director, Dr. Mathuram Santosham. Dr. O’Keefe is a psychologist who develops, implements and evaluates culturally-driven behavioral health interventions in partnership with Native communities. She was appointed an assistant professor in the Department of International Health at the Bloomberg School in 2017, becoming the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s first tenure track faculty member of Native American heritage. 

Watch the recording.

News

Make a Contribution
Please share this newsletter with friends who might be interested in our work. They can sign up for email updates here. Thank you!
Facebook
Twitter
Website
Copyright © 2021 Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health, All rights reserved.


Unsubscribe from this list
Update subscription preferences