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Language for CBPR Grant Proposals

Below you will find a list of adaptable, Alaska-specific language that may help researchers and community partners strengthen grant applications by accurately describing the unique cultural, geographic, and healthcare contexts of Alaska. These guides will help your grant proposal target the right audience, accurately describe your research and your community, and ultimately help your grants succeed at higher rates.
Please adapt this proposal language for your work!

Need to adapt evidence-based interventions for Alaskans (written by Stacy Rasmus and Katie Cueva)

“Interventions that are evidence-based for populations living in the lower 48 states, in urban settings, or with non-Indigenous peoples, may not be feasible, acceptable or effective in the very distinct cultural contexts of rural Alaska. ”

Remoteness of rural Alaska (written by Stacy Rasmus and Katie Cueva)

“The remoteness of the region is perhaps one of the main reasons why communities in this vast area must retain a lifestyle that allows them to gather foods from the local environments. There are no roads in this region that connect communities, so individuals who need medical care are transported by plane. Every community in the region has a small village clinic that is generally staffed by community health aides with varying levels of experience and certification. Subregional clinics are staffed with a mid-level provider but acute care is very limited. There is one regional service hub for the area where the regional Tribal Health Corporation staffs a hospital that provides outpatient family medicine, pediatric care, obstetrics and women’s health, pharmacy and diagnostic imaging. Surgical and acute care patients are typically flown into the regional hub then on into Anchorage, Alaska, which is about 900 miles from some of the more remote communities in the region. Flights from small communities to regional hub are by small aircraft and can take 1-1.5 hours. Larger jets then connect people to Anchorage. Small planes regularly cannot fly into or out of small communities in the region due to weather holds that last hours to weeks, and even the large planes that can land in the regional hub can be deterred due to storms and high winds. Due to the remoteness, transportation challenges, and lack of access to medicine and healthcare, preventative health in rural Alaska communities is of the utmost concern.”

Disparities impacting Alaska Native people (written by Stacy Rasmus and Katie Cueva)

“Alaska is home to 229 federally recognized Alaska Native Tribes disproportionately burdened by health disparities (Ward, Black, et al., 2022). Over the last century Alaska Native people have experienced rapid and imposed social and environmental changes. These changes occur in the context of colonial incursions in the Arctic that have marginalized Indigenous communities and cultures and created structures of inequity, mistrust, and racialized discrimination that have removed Indigenous people as primary drivers of public health policy (Rasmus, Allen & Ford, 2014). Consequently, Alaska Native people experience serious health inequities and are burdened by disparities in infectious diseases, chronic diseases, as well as suicide, substance use disorders, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and socioeconomic inequities (Parrish, Raines, Flannery & Avila, 2022; Hull-Jilly, Saxon, Hannigan & Van Kirk, 2020; Topol, et al., 2022). The health inequities experienced among Alaska Native communities are significant and well-documented in the literature (McKinley, Spencer, Walters & Figley, 2020).

Tribal data sovereignty/data sharing language (written by Stacy Rasmus)

“As stated in the Supplemental Information to the NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing: Responsible Management and Sharing of American Indian/Alaska Native Participant Data: “Tribal Nations have unique rights associated with Tribal sovereignty to control how biomedical research can be performed within Tribal jurisdiction, including how their data can be collected, used, managed, and shared.” In alignment with this recognition of Tribal sovereignty, our data management is governed by a Tribal Council Resolution from the [Tribal Entity] and data and metadata from this study will not be stored in a shared repository as the data generated from this pilot trial study is owned exclusively by the Tribe and may only be shared in aggregate with explicit permission of the Tribe. This study collects data on Alaska Native youth, and there is a long history of unethical treatment of Native Americans in research, and significant misuse of data with this vulnerable population. Furthermore, pursuant to Title 45 CFR 46, Subpart A-46.101, (f), American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes have the authority to make the decisions and set policy in the protection of human subjects involved in research taking place with members of federally-recognized Tribes. All potential participants in the awarded application are members of federally-recognized Tribes, and each partnering [Tribal organization and the regional Tribal health authority], has passed a formal Resolution or equivalent Tribal law that delegates the ruling body’s authority to each of their respective research review boards. These Tribal research review boards have in prior studies found the sharing of data about Tribal members, and specifically, Tribal children and minors, to be of unacceptable risk to the Tribal communities and young participants. Tribal populations, particularly in rural Alaska, are very small, some Tribes have fewer than 100 Tribal members. With these small numbers, data sharing could violate the confidentiality of Alaska Native participants.”

Other potential items to include when describing communities (compiled by the Alaska Municipal League)

Include information about your community that you know that others may not, such as:

  • Are you on the road system or not, and how much does it cost to get to Anchorage or Seattle?
  • What does a gallon of milk cost, or gas, or other grocery items?
  • What are the effects of climate change that you are experiencing – flooding, sea ice retreat, extreme storms, or permafrost thaw?
  • Is there anything you could say about kids or students in your community, and opportunities they have or not?
  • What about jobs or lack of jobs, businesses in your community?”
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