The 2024 Hope in Healing Native Opioid Summit is the Community Health Education and Resiliency Program's second in-person opioid summit. This year's summit is a three-day summit held in downtown Albuquerque at the Clyde Hotel, March 12-14, 2024. The summit agenda brings together a collection of clinical, holistic, sustainable, and educational opioid-related presentations.

For the clinical aspect of the summit, we have Physician Sara Spencer from the Ninilchik Community Clinic presenting "Utilizing Low-threshold XR Buprenorphine to Address Stimulant-Fentanyl Overdose Risk in Rural and Indigenous Populations."

With many Tribe’s receiving Opioid Litigation Settlement Funding, we will have Andrea Medley, MPH, a research associate from John Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health, offering the session "Indigenizing Opioid Litigation Settlements and the Co-creating Tribal Principles."

When we talk about holistic and sustainable wellness, this includes the care of the professionals. We are ending this year's summit with the session "Thriving Together: Burnout Signs, Support, and Sustainable Balance" by Monique Castro, Indigenous Circle of Wellness. 

These are just a few of the transformative and engaging presentations that the summit will feature.

CHERP looks forward to seeing you at the Hope in Healing Native Opioid Summit. Let’s make a positive impact on the opioid epidemic and focus on strength-based practices.

March 18-22, 2024, is the 22nd National LGBTQ Health Awareness Week. We recognize our Native relatives who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) or Two-Spirit who face significant barriers to accessing healthcare much like the mainstream LGBTQ+ community. While discrimination, stigma, and healthcare-denying policies are common challenges, the Native LGBT+ and Two-Spirit community contends with additional social and political determinants of health rooted in our Native history and culture.

Dr. Maria Yellow Brave Heart defines historical trauma as a “collective emotional and psychological injury both over the lifespan and across generations, resulting from a cataclysmic history of genocide.” That historical trauma caused a shift in Native cultural perspectives on non-binary gender identities once widely accepted in Native communities. For Native LGBT+ and Two-Spirit people, many respond to this trauma with resilience and strength. However, many also carry feelings of shame, survivor guilt, anxiety, low self-esteem, anger, sadness, suicidal and self-destructive behavior, and despair.

Having a strong and positive cultural identity, family support, and community acceptance help lessen the effects of historical trauma and promote good health and wellbeing for many Native LGBT+ and Two-Spirit people. These cultural protective factors align with the teachings of our Native healers, who reassure us that cultural practices serve as the most important “medicine” for promoting health and resiliency.

Here are a few strategies to promote Native LGBT+ and Two-Spirit wellness:

• Learn about Native LGBT+ and Two Spirit terms and concepts to avoid making assumptions about what those identities might mean to an individual patient.
• Realize the role of historical trauma and settler colonialism on the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health of AI/AN people.
• Appreciate patients as a whole person and not just a single identity.
• Ask all patients for their pronouns and name to be used by staff. Avoid making assumptions about a person’s identity based on their physical appearance.

Click here to request a training on Native Gender and Sexuality.

As the days are getting longer and brighter, some of us are looking forward to the sunshine and warmer days while others are dreading the heat that lies ahead. Regardless of how you feel about the current change in seasons, there is one common experience that we will all share: adjusting to the time change.

As we turn our clocks ahead on March 10th, we might enjoy later sunsets and ending our workdays “earlier,” however this does come with some consequences. Studies show that people struggle with adjusting to the time change in various ways, as is evidenced by an increase in incidents such as car accidents. The time change can particularly affect young people as they are still expected to keep the same school schedules while their bodies are growing (even though research shows that teenagers fare better when school starts later in the day).

With all this in mind, there are some actions we can take to help us navigate the time change more gracefully and with care for ourselves and our communities. Below are some ideas to consider as we gear up to change our clocks.

• Adjust your sleep schedule gradually. In the days or weeks leading up to the time change, try going to bed and waking up just a little bit earlier at a time, until you have adjusted to the full hour change.
• Focus on your wind down and bedtime routine. To help you adjust to an earlier bedtime, try strategies like focusing on calming activities in the evening, limiting screen time in the hours before bedtime, and creating a calming environment in your bedroom with dim lighting and relaxing music.
• Soak up some natural light in the morning. Getting some sunlight in the morning helps us wake up by “telling” our brains that it’s morning time.
• Have patience and grace with yourself and others (especially young ones). Prioritize your self-care to help “recharge your batteries” so that you can be patient with yourself and others as we all navigate adjusting to the time change. Remember that most of us will not be able to show up as our best selves until we have had some time to adjust. 

The 2024 National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (NNHAAD) takes place on March 20, 2024. This year's theme "It's All Relative, Our Experience Makes a Difference" acknowledges the invaluable contribution of Native communities in ending the HIV epidemic, underscoring the significance of Native visibility in national HIV strategies and funding opportunities.

NNHAAD was created in 2007 as a national mobilization initiative aimed at encouraging American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians throughout the United States and Territorial Areas to become educated, get tested, engage in prevention, and seek treatment for HIV. In 2019, the National Native HIV Network took the lead in coordinating NNHAAD activities nationally.

As NNHAAD 2024 quickly approaches, tribes, Native-serving organizations, and other entities can participate by:

• Ordering 2024 NNHAAD Products from the NNHAAD Products page.
• List their local NNHAAD events on the NNHAAD website events page.
• Share content on social media using the official hashtag #NNHAAD2024.