ST PAUL, Minn. — The Minnesota Department of Health is stepping up efforts to improve health care for Native Americans, with the new Office of American Indian Health.
Public health leaders gathered on the Capitol steps Wednesday to celebrate the formal launch of the agency, which will partner with tribal clinics and urban non-profits that serve Indigenous families.
"American Indians nationwide and in the state of Minnesota have lower life expectancies, and higher chronic disease incidents, and higher maternal mortality, higher suicide rates, higher poverty rates than the general population," Dr. Brooke Cunningham, MD, the Minnesota Commissioner of Health, told the crowd.
"We are finally catching up to some of the solutions, about emphasizing cultural ways of knowing, traditional practices, traditional healing."
The new agency will have 10 staff members spread out across the state, and a budget of $9 million per year to begin. Much of that money will go to medical providers as targeted grants and partnership arrangements.
Longtime Native health practitioner Kris Rhodes will lead the new office, which will also gather and analyze data to pinpoint which healthcare strategies are working and which ones aren't.
"When it comes to American Indian Health Data, a lot of times our data isn't included because of small numbers, or because of lack of access," Rhodes said.
"It’s really important our office be able to support the data experts at the Department of Health to improve data access for tribal communities."
Rhodes points to the homeless encampments as the most visible reminder of the inequities Native Americans face when it comes to housing, employment, income and healthcare outcomes.
"But our communities have everything we need to thrive and move forward when we lean on our culture, our language, our land, and our people," Rhodes said.
Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan spoke of her father, the White Earth Ojibwe activist Marvin Manypenny who passed away in 2020. Flanagan said her dad struggled in an underfunded health system.
"He suffered from heart disease and diabetes, and he lost a leg. And then we heard from a healthcare professional at another system who said, 'We don’t think that was necessary.' That can’t happen! That can’t happen anymore!"
The new office will work on a variety of approaches to solving disparities in health outcomes, taking a more holistic approach that includes housing.
"People ask me what’s the most important? Is it your language? Is it your land? Is it your people? And it’s like, to all of us, we know, it’s all the same thing," State Rep. Alicia Kozlowski said.
Rep. Kozlowski, a member of the Fond du Lac band of Ojibwe, helped push through legislation to create funding for the new office. She said it will improve health outcomes for all Minnesotans.
"Going forward from here we have the hope for more audacity. We have the audacity to say show us the money, we need the resources, and the funding, and the capacity to get this office up and running, to do this work across the state!"
Dr. Antony Stately of the Native American Community Clinic in Minneapolis said it was important to celebrate a milestone when it come to addressing gaps in healthcare for Native people. But he said this effort needs to be sustained.
"These inequities have been longstanding and intractable for decades," Stately told the group of public health leaders.
"Establishing the Office of American Indian Health will help to change this trajectory by creating a space and environment where we are able to write and reimagine our own future."
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