April 10, 2014

American Indian Higher Education Consortium Leaders visit IWRI

Three leaders of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) visited IWRI on January 29 – 30, 2014:  President and CEO Carrie Billy, JD; Research Committee Chair and Blackfeet Community College (Montana) President Billie Jo Kipp, PhD; and Native American Research Centers for Health 8 Program Director Deborah His Horse is Thunder, PhD.

The AIHEC visit was hosted by Bonnie Duran, the Principal Investigator of “Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCU) Alcohol, Drugs and Mental Health Epidemiology Study” (funded by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities No. 5P60MD006909) and “TCU Behavioral Health Adaptation of Evidence-Based Intervention” (funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism No. 1R01AA022068-01) and by IWRI’s TCU Research Team. It is one of the first in a series of steps designed to strengthen the four year partnership between IWRI, AIHEC and up to 37 individual TCU, and to develop TCU research capacities to address health disparities among Native American students.

In several productive meetings, the AIHEC principals provided invaluable input on TCU student recruitment strategies for the epidemiological survey, feedback on the survey instrument, and ideas about formalizing the relationship between IWRI’s TCU Research Team’s Publications Committee and AIHEC’s Research Committee to oversee dissemination of publications resulting from these and other studies.

 

The meetings wrapped up with AIHEC’s commitment to provide IWRI’s TCU Research Team space to host a luncheon for the TCU Presidents, and make a presentation to the Research Committee at the AIHEC Spring 2014 Board of Directors meeting on Friday, March 14, 2014, in Billings, Montana.