For the 2nd year Peter Catches of Oceti Wakan in Pine Ridge was asked to serve on a panel at the National Institutes of Health with the Surgeon General as Chair. The focus was on Community-Based Participatory Research with focus on women and to help create better health equity. Other participants included Dr. Donald Warne, MD, who is a Lakota from Kyle and Professor in Women’s Health at NDSU, Hani Atrash, MD, National Director of Healthy Start, and other doctors and professors of health, philanthropy, and social innovations.
The day before most of the panel was asked to participate in the 1st Annual Pocahontas Memorial Research Symposium, whose vision of Capt. Lawrence Nelson, USPHS and Christine Eads of Rachel’s Well created a dialog for health that would include adding the spiritual reality to our physical reality in health, a concept that has always been apart of health from Native peoples. Dr. Donald Warne started it out by an excellent presentation on American Indian Health Policies and Health Disparities, which was addressed thru out the day. Peter Catches followed with a presentation on Spiritual Care the Lakota Way. This symposium laid a strong foundation for the next day’s panel discussion at the NIH to make strong connections with the hope of making a difference for the people here at Pine Ridge. This was made possible by a grant from the Mary Elizabeth Conover Foundation.
(Cindy Catches wrote and submitted this to the Lakota Times and Native Sun News)
