By The Annie E. Casey Foundation, June 17, 2020
The COVID-19 crisis has disproportionately affected Native Americans. By leveraging its relationships and understanding of tribal culture, the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health is doing its part by providing food, water, personal protective equipment and other essential home health items, as well as COVID-19 testing and contact tracing efforts.
The response effort, funded in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, is deploying the Center’s workforce, tribal collaborators, relationships with national organizations and providers that have adopted Family Spirit — the Center's evidence-based early childhood home visiting program developed by and for Native Americans — to channel relief resources and culturally meaningful communications to tribal communities across the United States.
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, Native Americans suffered higher rates of infectious disease severity and death than any other population in the United States. Many of those served by the Center — which is based in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health — live in overcrowded, multi-generational homes that make being isolated a challenge. An estimated 80% of children in Native communities rely on receiving breakfast and lunch from now-closed schools. In the Navajo Nation alone, more than 30% of families don't have a tap or indoor plumbing at home, making hand washing difficult.
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