Post-Doctoral Fellowships

One Sky Center currently offers two national post-doctoral fellowship positions for American Indian professionals. The program, funded by McNeil Pharmaceuticals, focuses on public health, substance abuse and mental health services for American Indians. The fellowship program operates under the aegis of the Center for American Indian Health Education and Research at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon. The fellowships are tied into the American Indian/Alaska Native National Resource Center for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services.

The resource center is the first national resource center dedicated to improving prevention and treatment of substance abuse and mental illness among Native people. The SAMHSA administrator, Charles G. Currie, states "working with stakeholders from across the country this center will provide a blue-print for comprehensive services that honor the traditional ways of living and healing among Native Americans."

The focus of the National Center is to promote and nurture effective and culturally appropriate services for Native populations; to identify culturally appropriate, effective evidence-based treatment and prevention practices; and to provide training, technical assistance, and products to expand capacity and quality of substance abuse prevention and treatment and mental illness care to those practitioners who serve this population.

The Post-Doctoral fellows are selected to work with the faculty and programs identified as part of the national One Sky Center. Goals for the first year of funding are to appoint professionals whose work and efforts will greatly expand the capacity of quality medical work throughout American Indian systems. Each fellow is associated with a faculty mentor to assist their development as an academic health care provider, and prepare them for work in the community. They establish their own research and program development agenda, and participate in other activities designed to reinforce their training. Faculty support from both the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of Public Health and Preventive Medicine are available.

It is significant to note that candidates participating in the post-doctoral fellowship at this time are American Indians. This is an absolutely unique opportunity to assist in training individuals in an area of highest health care disparity, according to the Surgeon General’s report. The continuing problems of health status and the burden of illness is particularly true among those individuals living below the poverty line, and American Indians are indeed disproportionately affected. This situation is made worse by the fact that there are few under-represented minority students in post-doctoral level training.

A travel budget is available for each of the two fellows to make trips to reservation, and urban sites, and other resources around the U.S as needed to complete their training. Office expenses are included and administrative time to coordinate for and support meetings, activities, teaching, and training is available.

Post Graduate programs with more than one year of funding are desirable. Thus, One Sky Center is collaborating with the Department of Public Health & Preventive Medicine in an NIAAA grant proposal to fund a 5-year fellowship program that will provide 2 years of support for 2-3 fellows per year. Additional avenues for extended support will be sought.

In recognition of McNeil Consumer and Specialty Pharmaceuticals, the director of the One Sky National research Center for American Indian and Alaska Natives assists McNeil as they develop initiatives in cultural competence, especially as related to American Indian populations. We sincerely appreciate McNeil’s demonstration of a commitment to improved cultural competence for health care providers and their financial support to launch a fellowship program.