Studying Indigenous traditional ceremonial practices as a culturally effective strategy for reducing problem substance use in Indigenous communities

The Foundation's initiative, Policies for Action: Policy and Law Research to Build a Culture of Health, was designed to form the evidence base regarding how policy and law can promote and may be necessary to build a Culture of Health by: (1) supporting health policy research focused on advancing a Culture of Health and supporting real-world empirical applications of that research; and (2) establishing hubs throughout the United States that will provide additional capacity to identify, develop, and oversee new and emerging areas of research in the field. Problem substance use is a significant issue for many contemporary Indigenous communities, both reservation-based and urban. This research seeks to embrace a shared definition of health and wellness with an Indigenous approach by using a two-phase, sequential mixed-methods approach to explore acceptability and factors that can inform the development of an effective, culturally centered polysubstance abuse prevention intervention. They will use an Indigenous research framework in a mixed-methods approach to develop a community-informed program for polysubstance abuse prevention. Phase I will consist of a questionnaire distributed to Indigenous young adults in the target communities to capture preferences regarding indigenous traditional ceremonial practice (TCP) based prevention programming (content, format, logistics, etc.), including which TCPs these young adults would like to see integrated into a prevention intervention. In Phase II, survey results will be shared first with the community advisory committee to establish cultural appropriateness.