Communities throughout rural Alaska are creating community-based treatment and prevention methods, as well as using existing indigenous cultural resources to treat and prevent health problems and alcohol and substance abuse. There is a growing revolution of hope known as the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) Sobriety Movement. The sobriety movement stresses the need for people of the villages, not health agencies and corporations, to take responsibility for their own well-being. Yet, alcohol is just one of the health problems Alaska Native people face. Beginning with measures to control and eradicate TB in Alaska Native villages, which has been a major accomplishment, other health problems, particularly rising concerns about behavioral health risk factors, have received a great deal of current attention, because they account for the major causes of mortality. A concern about how to prevent health and behavioral health problems in Alaska has focused increasingly on building personal and community competence in order to increase hope among Alaska Native communities.
Notes
Available upon request at the Alaska Medical Library, located on the second floor of UAA/APU Consortium Library. Ask for accession no. 102392.