The National Indian Health Board (NIHB) is currently accepting for their Native Youth Summit. This years summit is hosted by the Navajo Nation and will take place in Window Rock, AZ, September 4-9. For more information contact Robert Foley rfoley@nihb.org.

From the National Indian Health Board website:

The 2013 Native Youth Summit took place August 23-26, 2013 at the Grand Traverse Resort in Traverse City, Michigan. This was the National Indian Health Board’s (NIHB) 3rd Annual Native Youth Summit and was held in advance of our premiere conference, the National Annual Consumer Conference –The Dawn of a New Health Care System: Transforming Tribal Health through Tradition and Change. In keeping with the theme of transformation and standing on tradition, this year’s Tribal Youth Health Summit focused on two critical health issues in Indian Country: cancer and diabetes.

As Native people, we are from cultures of story-telling and during this Summit participating youth gained the tools and knowledge to tell their stories through digital film-making. Our sponsoring partners at the Summit were the Mayo Clinic Spirit of Eagles program and Healthy Native Communities Partnership. As a training partner, Healthy Native Communities Partnership worked with NIHB in preparation of the Summit to bring state-of-the-art training and technical assistance in creating digital stories. The three-day event culminated in the NIHB 2nd Annual Native Youth Film Festival on the last day of the Youth Summit and first day of the Annual Consumer Conference.

The three-day Native Youth Summit included digital story-telling workshops, health promotion/ disease prevention education sessions on the emerging issues of Diabetes and Cancer, and provided tools to create youth-developed prevention and education short films. Diabetes and cancer, the focus areas for the digital stories and the health education sessions, continue to be issues greatly affecting Tribal communities. By educating Native youth and creating Native youth health advocates, who will share these stories to change their communities, NIHB hope to reduce the incidence and prevalence of diabetes and cancer in Indian Country.

To view Summit participants’ digital stories, please CLICK HERE.

To view photos from the 2013 Youth Summit, please CLICK HERE.