Indigenous Health: Looking to the Future

Paris Grubbs
Dec 10, 2021
2 min read

As with all other minority communities, the opportunity to obtain better health outcomes and treatment within the Native American community are affected by social determinants of health. In 1921, the U.S government signed the Snyder Act that was supposed to allow funds for the conservation of health among Native Americans individuals in the United States. This was followed up by the Indian Health Care Improvement Act in 1976. This act was also supposed to help provide basic health care needs and address the health status of Native Americans. Congress had to reauthorize the Indian Health Care Improvement Act four times until a permanent reauthorization was passed in 2010. This final reauthorization was supposed to solidify the Natives right to receive proper health care in the U.S. However, according to a 2018 report, ‘Broken Promises: Continuing Federal Funding Shortfall for Native Americans’, the United States government hasn’t been correctly funding these programs (Heriot, 2018). This inadequate funding leads to many indigenous communities not having the ability to receive quality health care. This also results in extremely poor health outcomes for Native Americans.

Therefore, one way to help improve healthcare for Indigenous Americans is to help secure funding for the programs that are designed to help them. You can help secure funding by using social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to bring awareness to the fact that Natives health programs are severely underfunded. When you bring awareness to these types of issues it expands the amount of individuals who know about the issue and allows people to become educated. This will also create a stronger base of support and encourage them to participate in bringing change by protesting to help put pressure on the government to correctly fund these programs. Another way to help improve healthcare for Indigenous communities is to address the prejudice among health workers that treat Indigenous Americans. Many stereotypes about Native American health are constantly being circulated around them. Stereotypes such as they’re ignorant about health issues or they don’t care about their health. These harmful stereotypes result in a lot of missed diagnosis because the health workers have preconceived notions about their health. Therefore, addressing these prejudices allows room for improvement in the quality of care an indigenous patient receives. In addition one could also start a go fund me page. This will allow people to donate money to organizations, like the Indian Health Service, that can go towards helping individuals within the Native community with medical expenses and improving their communities.

References

“Brief History of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act.” Tribal Health

Reform Resource Center, www.nihb.org/tribalhealthreform/ihcia-

history/.

Heriot, Gail L. “Dissenting Statement of Gail Heriot in the Report of the

U.S. Commission on

Civil Rights: Broken Promises: Continuing Federal Funding Shortfall

for Native Americans.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018,

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3305251.

Sciences, National Academies of, et al. “Native American Health:

Historical and Legal Context.” Communities in Action: Pathways to

Health Equity., U.S. National Library of Medicine, 11 Jan. 2017,