Project Purpose: The Confederated Tribes of Umatilla Indian Reservation Native Connections Project at the Yellowhawk Tribal Health Center is centered upon providing upstream behavioral health prevention strategies through a broad-based implementation of the Conscious Discipline (CD), a trauma-informed model for social emotional learning. CD training will be provided to tribal staff, parents, local school staff, and staffs of other youth-serving organizations. The goal of CD is to intervene with children and their parents at younger ages in the hopes of reducing the risk and rate of adverse childhood experiences, which set the foundation for the later development of substance use and mental health disorders, as well as other potentially chronic diseases. Another goal of this project is to develop a culturally-based horse program geared toward increasing protective factors, decreasing risk factors, and engaging all youth in prevention, recovery and mental health promotion activities.
Evaluation: Working closely with the Native Connections Project Director and SAMHSA, NPC ensures the evaluation addresses the information needs of all stakeholders. Because of the importance of trusted relationships, NPC Research uses a participatory framework to gain and keep the trust and cooperation of program partners for required national-level data collection as well as local evaluation and reporting. NPC’s goal is to design processes and tools to make data collection and reporting both accurate and burden free for staff.
Project Design: This is a multi-method study, with process and outcome evaluation components. Process information is gathered through community readiness assessments to address behavioral health issues; surveys to understand how CTUIR staff and program partners are using their new Conscious Discipline skills; key stakeholder interviews in the area of tribal horse history and culture; and pre and post surveys to understand the impact of the new horse therapy program for youth.
Funding Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Start Date: October 2015
Project Team
Principal Investigator