Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Healthcare: Native American Health

Evaluates health equity across race and ethnicity, both within and between states, to illuminate how state health systems perform for Black, white, Latinx/ Hispanic, AIAN, and Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) populations.

Documents the existence of cultural, social and structural barriers that continue to limit Native American access to health care, and makes numerous recommendations including educating and training health care providers on cultural differences that influence the effectiveness of disease prevention and treatment programs, recruiting more health care providers to reduce patient wait times and ensure that services are available when needed, increasing the retention rates for IHS health care providers to improve the continuity of health care and strengthen the doctor-patient relationship, improving program monitoring and evaluation, modernizing data collection, increasing appropriated funding levels, increasing enrollment in public insurance programs, and increasing collections from third party insurers.

Update to the 2003 report, A Quiet Crisis: Federal Funding and Unmet Needs in Indian Country, which evaluated budgets and spending of federal agencies that sponsor Native American programs, including the Departments of Health and Human Services, Interior, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, and Education.

Overview of the history, funding, structure, and work environment of the Indian Health Service.

Examines health care issues facing urban American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Summary of a workshop that brought together more than 100 health care providers, policy makers, program administrators, researchers, and Native advocates to discuss the sizable health inequities affecting Native American, Alaska Native, First Nation, and Pacific Islander populations and the potential role of culture in helping to reduce those inequities.

Reveals that federal funding directed to Native Americans through programs at the U.S. Department of Interior, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Education, and U.S. Department of Agriculture has not been sufficient to address the basic and very urgent needs of indigenous peoples. Among the myriad unmet needs are: health care, education, public safety, housing, and rural development.