Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council has won more than four million dollars over the next five years for chronic disease prevention projects.
The federal grant from the Center for Disease Control will fund consultations and trainings with 34 tribes in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Michigan, plus four urban Indian Health centers.
Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Council Epidemiologist Isaiah Brokenleg says the region’s tribes carry a heavy burden of chronic disease.
“It’s also reducing years of productive life: people’s ability to walk, people’s ability to go to work, and just have a good quality of life. And the unfortunate thing is that many of these diseases are preventable.”
Beginning next year, the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Epidemiology Center will also be awarding grants to a few individual tribes that apply to address health issues like tobacco exposure or obesity.
Brokenleg says the organization will be looking for projects that have been developed from within the community they’re trying to serve.
“What happens far too often is there’s an intervention that might work in a big city or a non Indian community. And they stick some feathers on it and try to do a scaled down version and do it in a rural community, and it’s not successful. And often it’s because they didn’t really start with a rural community to begin with.”
The grant to the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Epidemiology Center totals $850,000 per year for five years.
It’s part of a federal grant program totaling more than $200 million for chronic disease prevention.
