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Public health Main article: Native American disease and epidemics As of 2004, according to the United States Commission on Civil Rights: "Native Americans die of diabetes, alcoholism, tuberculosis, suicide, and other health conditions at shocking rates. Beyond disturbingly high mortality rates, Native Americans also suffer a significantly lower health status and disproportionate rates of disease compared with all other Americans."[83]

In addition to increasing numbers of American Indians entering the fields of community health and medicine, agencies working with Native American communities have sought partnerships, representatives of policy and program boards, and other ways to learn and respect their traditions and to integrate the benefits of Western medicine within their own cultural practices.

Six researchers (Gone et al)[1] (Links to an external site.) conducted a systematic review of thirty two articles that targeted Indigenous Historical Trauma (Links to an external site.) and correlating empirical data related to health outcomes in Indigenous populations. The articles examined Indigenous populations in both the United States and Canada.

The systematic review organized the thirty articles into three categories for analysis. The first category contained nineteen articles with the focus of health outcomes for Indigenous people who experienced historical loss either personally or transgenerationally. Historical loss was measured in accordance with the Historical Loss Scale created by Whitbeck, Adams, et al.(2004)[2] (Links to an external site.). Twelve types of loss were identified, including “loss of our land” “loss of our language”, and “loss of our traditional spiritual ways”.

The second category examined eleven articles focused on the theme of residential school ancestry studies which took a closer look at Indigenous people mainstreamed into Indian boarding school (Links to an external site.) systems and the correlated health impacts of those individuals or the relatives of those individuals. The third category consisted of three articles with the category of “other”. Two of the articles focused on the outcomes of a psychoeducation intervention and the remaining article examined the health outcomes of families who had a grandparent subjected to a relocation program (Links to an external site.).

After completing the systematic review of all thirty two articles, it was affirmed that historical hardships experienced by previous Indigenous generations can have a transmitted impact on the health and wellbeing of current Indigenous generations.

[1] Gone, J. P., Hartmann, W. E., Pomerville, A., Wendt, D. C., Klem, S. H., & Burrage, R. L. (2019). The impact of historical trauma on health outcomes for indigenous populations in the USA and Canada: A systematic review. American Psychologist, 74(1), 20-35. doi:10.1037/amp0000338

[2] Whitbeck, L. B., Chen, X., Hoyt, D. R., & Adams, G. W. (2004). Discrimination, historical loss and enculturation: Culturally specific risk and resiliency factors for alcohol abuse among American Indians. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 65, 409 – 418. http://dx.doi.org/10.15288/jsa .2004.65.409