Following the lead of our people than two decades ago, as the Alaska Native Sobriety Movement at the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention, more Alaskans are celebrating sober living and trying to break down stigmas that might surround sobriety – both for those who are in addiction recovery and those who don’t choose to use drugs or alcohol at all. In Alaska, March has been designated as Sobriety Awareness Month, an opportunity to celebrate living sober, healthy lifestyles and encourage ...

Protecting our families at home is important to us all. While there are many ways people protect their homes from outside threats, there are many things inside our homes that can harm our families. Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium’s Substance Abuse Prevention Program and Injury Prevention Program want you to think about keeping your home and family safe during National Poison Prevention Week, March 17-24. A growing risk to our health is accidental or unintentional poisonings, especially from substances people ...

This is the final story of a four part sponsored series with the Anchorage Daily News. For years, Alaska Native people sought to manage their own Tribal health care system. When the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium formed, that goal had been reached, and the work was just beginning. With Tribal health care in Alaska no longer directed by Indian Health Service administrators in Maryland, ANTHC had the flexibility to manage services that would enable Alaska Native people to chart their own course to good ...

This is part three of a four part sponsored series with the Anchorage Daily News. For the average Alaskan, 1997 was the year that brought the most visible change to Tribal health care. That’s when the Indian Health Service finished construction on the $170 million Alaska Native Medical Center in midtown Anchorage. Behind the scenes, something much bigger was taking shape. The Alaska Tribal Health Compact Since the 1970s, Alaska’s Tribes had been contracting with the federal government, Read Part 2, to manage an ...

This is part two of a four part sponsored series with the Anchorage Daily News. Fish strips hung in the smokehouse. Flies and mosquitoes buzzed around the outhouses. Pompan stepped off the boat in a three-piece suit and wing tip shoes. “I don’t know where he thought he was going, but he dressed for D.C., and he came to Indian Country,” recalled Paul Sherry. Sherry, who would later go on to be the first CEO of Alaska’s statewide Tribal health consortium, was ...

This is part one of a four part sponsored series with the Anchorage Daily News. Today, Alaska’s tribal health care system is owned and managed by the Alaska Native people, with objectives and innovations that are unique to the cultures, trends and geography of our state. But this hasn’t always been the case. Ask those who worked to put Alaska Native health care in the hands of Alaska Native people and they’ll tell you there was nothing easy about getting ...