Del Yazzie
Del
Yazzie, Navajo, MPH, is currently a medical student at
the University of Arizona. When this article was
originally published, he was training director at the
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center
for American Indian Health.
Building Native Capabilities in Public
Health
Del Yazzie, Navajo, MPH, is dedicated to improving the
health of Native communities. “Native people deserve better
health care, better health policies, better funding for
Indian health programs and more involvement of Native
people in creating and administering health programs that
address their community health needs,” says Yazzie. “Health
is a right, not a privilege.”
With a master’s degree in public health, Yazzie currently
is the training director at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health Center for American Indian Health.
His major responsibility is helping to build a national
training program for Native American scholars, faculty, and
health care workers who want to enhance their knowledge and
skills in public health. Yazzie’s tasks include providing
training to Native health workers and others and recruiting
indigenous people into Hopkins’ graduate programs in public
health. This fall Yazzie will enter medical school so that
he can enhance his own capacity to improve the health of
his community.
Training Health Workers
Yazzie and his
colleagues hold regular training sessions for the up to 80
field workers on the Navajo Nation and the White Mountain
Apache Reservation who serve on projects linked to the
Center for American Indian Health. Almost a dozen of these
workers are family health educators with the
Family Spirit
Project. Most of
the others are involved in various biomedical research
projects that address the special health needs of the
people. The majority of the health workers are members
of the two reservations.
The field workers receive training in public health from a
variety of experts. Yazzie devotes most of his time to
training workers in a leadership model that he and his
colleagues developed. The model is based on traditional
wisdom “The focus of our training is on how to be a leader
and a role model in your community; how to set an example
for your peers and your community,” says Yazzie. “To do
this you have to figure out who you are inside and where
you come from. On a personal level you have to set goals
and figure out how to accomplish them. You also to have a
vision for your community and know how to set and
accomplish goals on the community level.”
Yazzie notes, “The field staffs have been very receptive to
the leadership training. They reflect on the fact that as
they were growing up their grandparents or parents
mentioned similar ideas about having goals and visions for
yourself and for your own people. Doing something for the
benefit of your people is a traditional value.”
A
Native American Course
Yazzie also
helped coordinate and administer the weeklong,
interdisciplinary Native American Course held at Hopkins.
According to Yazzie, “The emphasis is on working at the
front line with Native American people and communities to
help them solve their problems, using culturally sensitive
interventions. We brought in about 50 Native community
people, including community leaders, health professions,
administrators of health programs, traditional healers, and
tribal council members. The participants talked about the
problems in their communities, including diabetes,
alcoholism, suicide, homicide, and depression. They also
talked about the treatment and preventive strategies
they’re using to deal with these problems. I learned a lot.
The participants gave the course high marks.”
Native Vision Camp
Since 1996, the
Center for American Indian Health has run the Native Vision
Program in partnership with the NFL Players Association and
the Nick Lowery Charitable Foundation. One of the elements
of this program, which promotes healthy minds, healthy
bodies, and healthy families, is a camp for Native youth.
Former NFL players, NBA players and other athletes run the
sports clinic. In the summer of 2002, Del and his
colleagues also conducted computer-based leadership
workshops for the 800 youth attending the camp. “We taught
Native youth about setting life and educational goals as
well as creating personal visions that have intrinsic value
to them,” says Yazzie. “We also talked about the problems
as well as the positive aspects that exist within their
communities.”
Path
into Public Health
“I grew up in a
small rural community called Cove”, says Yazzie. “It’s on
the Navajo Nation about 50 miles from Shiprock. When I was
7, my father died from lung cancer. He worked in the nearby
uranium mines. No one informed him and others of the risks
of working in these poorly ventilated mines where they were
exposed to uranium radiation. When the traditional Navajo
healing ceremonies alone were not improving my father’s
health, I remember trying to research the effects of
radiation exposure on the lungs. Using an outdated health
book at my elementary school, I located the organs of the
body and read about what they do. That’s where my interest
in health began.”
“I grew up with 5 brothers and a sister. My mother raised
us by herself. She had tremendous emotional and spiritual
strengths, and she was courageous and extremely resilient.
Many of my friends grew up in single parent homes. Their
fathers had also died because they were trying to make a
living in the mines. My role models were strong, capable,
mothers, aunts, and grandmothers.”
Father
Figures
Several “father
figures and role models” supported Yazzie. He met his first
male role model when he attended Wingate High School, a
boarding school just outside of Gallup. “My basketball
coach and school principal, Adam Bull, Choctaw, had an
enormous influence on me. He instilled in me a sense of
security, which represented my sense of worth, my identity,
my emotional anchorage, my self-esteem, and my basic
personal strength. He also instilled in me basic personal
values of being a good, responsible person, a role model
for Native youth. And he taught me how to set personal
goals.” Bull also guided Yazzie in applying to University
of New Mexico where he was accepted.
Adjusting to college and an urban environment was a
struggle for Yazzie. The struggle was compounded by
“excessive family responsibilities and encountering
cultural misperceptions.” Yazzie also realized that his
academic preparation had been poor. Thankfully, Robert
Glew, a professor of biochemistry came into his life. “He
gave me unwavering financial, educational, social and
emotional support. He groomed me in terms of my
professional development. He directed a program called
Minority International Research Training Programs, which
was funded by the National Institute of Health. I was
accepted into that program. For 3 consecutive summers I
spent 10 weeks in Africa – first in Nigeria, then Zimbabwe,
and then Niger. I did small nutrition-related projects,
including analyzing the nutritional content of ‘famine
food.’ I also conducted other projects on malnutrition,
hypertension, and sickle cell anemia.”
Collaborating with Dr. Glew and other colleagues, Yazzie
wrote 6 papers about this research that were published in
scientific journals. Yazzie was the first author of 5 of
these papers.
When Yazzie graduated from the University of New Mexico
with a BS degree in biochemistry, his cousin, Dr.
Ray Reid, Navajo,
was in the audience. After the ceremony, Yazzie met Reid
for the first time. Reid, who was to become one of
Yazzie’s “biggest role models,” asked Yazzie what he
planned to do with his life. Yazzie said he wasn’t sure.
Yazzie returned home to Cove. “Two weeks after my
graduation I was helping my grandmother herd her sheep and
cattle up the mountain to the summer sheep camp when we saw
my cousin, Raymond Reid, driving towards us. He stopped and
talked with us. He told me about Dr. Mathuram Santosham,
who is professor of pediatrics and international health at
Hopkins and founded and directs the Center for American
Indian Health. He said he had been working with Dr.
Santosham on infectious disease related health issues and
other projects for decades. He said that next week, Dr.
Santosham would be visiting the Center’s field site at
Shiprock. My cousin suggested that I meet with Dr.
Santosham and perhaps consider doing an MPH at Hopkins. He
asked if I had a resume to show Dr. Santosham. I said,
'No.' He said, ‘Draft one and bring it to show it to Dr.
Santosham.’”
“The following week I met with Dr. Santosham. We went over
my resume, and he suggested that I submit an application to
Johns Hopkins.” Santosham became another important father
figure for Yazzie. He supported Yazzie during his two years
in the MPH program. When Yazzie received his degree,
Santosham hired him on at the center.
Medical
School and Beyond
Yazzie will be
attending the University of Arizona School of Medicine this
fall. “It’s the logical culmination of my experiences,” he
says. “Growing up in the midst of poverty, unemployment,
and alcoholism and losing my father at an early age, I
realized that obtaining an education was the only way to
understand these problems and to bring about change.” In
his present position, Yazzie has been helping to bring
about change. However, by continuing on to medical school
and then to a residency, possibly in primary care and rural
medicine, Yazzie hopes to be in an even better position to
make changes that will improve the health of his people.
“I’d like to return home and set up a clinic in Cove. Using
my public health background, I’d like to establish a center
that will promote the health of the Cove community through
culturally appropriate strategies for disease prevention as
well as health models and programs. I’d also like to
provide the youth with guidance regarding attaining higher
education.
Advice
Yazzie feels
there are many opportunities for indigenous people who
enter the field of public health. “Many organizations
(private and public) are in need of qualified Native people
who want to return to their communities and use their
training to better the lives of their people, ” he notes.
For people who want to consider careers in public health,
Yazzie suggests, “Find people who will support you and give
you proper guidance. I believe we must maintain our
commitments within our indigenous communities to be
supportive of each other. Together, we are strong and
capable. We are not the sum of our disparities. We can
enter a broad arena as brothers and sisters – on our path
to building better health and healthy communities.”
This
article was first published in the Summer 2003 issue
of
Winds of Change. (The cover
artist is Tina Santiago, Coushatta.)