Indigenous Health News and Research

RSS

UC Riverside receives grant to evaluate California’s traditional health care practices benefit

A $1.25 million grant to UC Riverside from the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) will support a statewide evaluation of California's traditional health care practices (THCP) benefit.

4 Sep 2026

Meningococcal B vaccine linked to lower gonorrhoea risk

The meningococcal B (MenB) vaccine could provide protection against more than one disease, with new research linking it to a significant reduction in the risk of gonorrhoea in young Territorians.

6 Aug 2026

This Northern Cheyenne doula was about to start getting paid — then Medicaid cuts hit

Misty Pipe had about an hour before her shift began at the post office. She used that time to check in on a new mom who lives a few miles outside this town at the heart of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation.

7 Apr 2026

Native Americans are dying from pregnancy. They want a voice to stop the trend.

Just hours after Rhonda Swaney left a prenatal appointment for her first pregnancy, she felt severe pain in her stomach and started vomiting.

15 Jan 2026

In Lodge Grass, Montana, a Crow community works to rebuild from meth’s destruction

Brothers Lonny and Teyon Fritzler walked amid the tall grass and cottonwood trees surrounding their boarded-up childhood home near the Little Bighorn River and daydreamed about ways to rebuild.

8 Jan 2026

In the vast expanses of Indian country, broadband gaps create health gaps, too

Standing atop Ferry Butte, Frances Goli scanned the more than half a million acres of Shoshone-Bannock tribal land below as she dug her hands into the pockets of a pink pullover.

17 Dec 2025

New Lancet series blends social science with medicine to tackle global health inequities

Can doctors in California learn from a patient who was bounced from one specialist to another in Japan? Can clinicians in London take lessons from a patient seeking asylum while suffering a medical emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border? Can doctors treating refugees in Africa inform health policy around the world?

5 Dec 2025

RFK Jr. wants to delay the hepatitis B vaccine. Here’s what parents need to know.

Working out of a tribal-owned hospital in Anchorage, Alaska, liver specialist Brian McMahon has spent decades treating the long shadow of hepatitis B. Before a vaccine became available in the 1980s, he saw the virus claim young lives in western Alaskan communities with stunning speed.

2 Dec 2025

OU researchers propose a novel solution to increase Indian Health Service funding

For many years, the Indian Health Service (IHS) has been underfunded, leading to health and life expectancy disparities among Indigenous people, according to University of Oklahoma researchers.

16 Oct 2025

Native Americans want to avoid past Medicaid enrollment snafus as work requirements loom

Jonnell Wieder earned too much money at her job to keep her Medicaid coverage when the covid-19 public health emergency ended in 2023 and states resumed checking whether people were eligible for the program.

22 Aug 2025

Data gaps worsen cardiovascular health inequities in racialized and Indigenous communities

CVD is the leading cause of death worldwide but does not affect people equally. In many countries, Black, South Asian and Indigenous peoples have higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, or high blood pressure compared to white populations.

22 Aug 2025

Tribal groups assert sovereignty as feds crack down on gender-affirming care

At the Two Spirit Conference in northern Nevada in June, Native Americans gathered in support of the LGBTQ+ community amid federal and state rollbacks of transgender protections and gender-affirming health care.

30 Jul 2025

Tribal health officials work to fill vaccination gaps as measles outbreak spreads

Cassandra Palmier had been meaning to get her son the second and final dose of the measles vaccine. But car problems made it difficult to get to the doctor.

24 Jul 2025

New partnership advances Indigenous cancer research in Canada

The Canadian Indigenous Nurses Association (CINA) and the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR) today announced a new partnership to include Indigenous priorities in cancer research, build capacity for research with and within First Nations, Inuit, and Métis (FNIM) communities, and increase research participation to ultimately reduce the burden of cancers within these populations.

10 Jun 2025

Tribes question Kennedy’s promise to protect them from health cuts

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly pledged to protect and improve health services for Native Americans — whether speaking during his late-January Senate confirmation hearing or an April trip to Arizona, where he met with tribal leaders.

6 Jun 2025

Native Americans hurt by federal health cuts, despite RFK Jr.’s promises of protection

Navajo Nation leaders took turns talking with the U.S. government's top health official as they hiked along a sandstone ridge overlooking their rural, high-desert town before the morning sun grew too hot.

3 Jun 2025

Language service cutbacks raise fear of medical errors, misdiagnoses, deaths

Health nonprofits and medical interpreters warn that federal cuts have eliminated dozens of positions in California for community workers who help non-English speakers sign up for insurance coverage and navigate the health care system.

29 May 2025

Trump’s fast-tracked deal for a copper mine heightens existential fight for Apache

Carrying eagle feathers and chanting prayers, Western Apache runners hit the road on a roughly 80-mile journey this month to try to save their sacred land from being fast-tracked by President Donald Trump into a copper mine.

14 May 2025

Federal cuts gut food banks as they face record demand

Food bank shortages caused by high demand and cuts to federal aid programs have some residents of a small community that straddles Idaho and Nevada growing their own food to get by.

1 May 2025

Amid plummeting diversity at medical schools, a warning of DEI crackdown’s ‘chilling effect’

The Trump administration's crackdown on DEI programs could exacerbate an unexpectedly steep drop in diversity among medical school students, even in states like California, where public universities have been navigating bans on affirmative action for decades.

20 Mar 2025