Health care will also improve when, metaphorically speaking, Indians “own” their own medical services, said Katherine Gottlieb, president and CEO of the Southcentral Foundation, which provides health care to more than 45,000 Alaskan natives and American Indians.
“We honor and respect our own,” she said. “Now that our care is in our own hands, we treat it with respect.”
Montana's Indian population suffers elevated rates of disease, death and infant mortality compared with other populations, but Gottlieb and Dr. Ted Mala said the Southcentral Foundation has started to turn similar statistics around in Alaska by focusing on prevention and wellness.
“We're especially interested in prevention,” said Mala, director of tribal relations and traditional healing at the Southcentral Foundation.
The Southcentral Foundation has been around for 25 years, and health care previously had been handled by the federal Indian Health Service, as it is for the majority of American Indians. Gottlieb didn't criticize Indian Health Services, but she said health care has improved since Alaska's many tribes came together to run their own health care program in southcentral Alaska, which includes Anchorage.
The foundation now draws about 45 percent of its budget from Indian Health Services, but is entirely in control of how that money is spent once the appropriation is made.
“Once we get that money, we control what happens to it,” Gottlieb said.
What the Southcentral Foundation has done - and what was of paramount interest to those gathered Thursday - is to craft a health care system that is responsive, culturally sensitive, proactive and more likely to promote independence over dependence.
Working with doctors and other health care providers, it's the client, Gottlieb and Mala said, who dictates the way treatment will progress.
“Our providers listen and we tell them what we need,” Gottlieb said. “It's a conclusion reached by everyone involved.”
That's a far cry from the past, when “experts” - government officials, health care professionals and missionaries - told Indians and Alaska natives what they needed to do for their health.
The effect of that, Gottlieb said, was a loss of self-esteem and an increase in dependence on the system.
“We learned to just let things happen,” Gottlieb said. “We felt like guinea pigs. We felt like cattle running through.”
Since 1982, the Southcentral Foundation has grown rapidly and enormously. The foundation once had fewer than 100 employees; now it has more than 1,200. Its budget has grown from $3 million to more than $100 million, and the foundation now provides more than 65 medical and behavioral health services.
The foundation's vision statement says: “A native community that enjoys emotional, physical, mental and spiritual wellness.”
Employees, Gottlieb said, don't just follow that statement, they live it.
“We live it, breathe it, eat it,” she said, noting that the organization is constantly making changes suggested by its clients.
“We're morphing all the time,” she said.
Now that Indians and Native Alaskans have a voice, they're using it, loudly and clearly, she said.
Mala said the foundation bases its treatment on traditional culture, including the use of traditional medicine.
“We do put culture at the core of everything that we do,” he said.
Reporter Michael Moore can be reached at 523-5252 or at mmoore@missoulian.com
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