ANA Healthy Relationships Program
Mt. Sanford Tribal Consortium (MSTC) is an Alaska Native Tribal Health Organization that serves the federally recognized Athabascan Indian Tribes of Cheesh’na and Mentasta Lake in Alaska’s Copper River region. Our program is located at MSTC’s main offices in Chistochina, where Cheesh’na Tribe is also located, and administered directly within the Native villages of Cheesh’na and Mentasta Lake.
The purpose of the Healthy Relationships Program is to develop and pilot a culturally appropriate, healthy relationships component for our Wellness program in the villages.
Our project activities include; reaffirming traditional Athabascan family values, raising awareness of village residents on the benefits of healthy relationships and marriage for children, families and communities, providing healthy relationships skill building activities for adults and abstinence education with risk eliminations and healthy relationships training for youth.
We are focusing on three major outcomes:
- 75% increased awareness of the benefits of healthy relationships and marriage among all adults and school age youth,
- 50% improvement in healthy relationship skills, i.e. communications, conflict resolution, etc. among participating adults
- a 50% increase in healthy relationship skills and 50% reduction in sexual activity among all school age youth.
We have developed a partnership agreement with the Let’s Talk Healthy Relationships program in Anchorage to provide training and technical assistance for developing the abstinence education component and are consulting with leading marriage improvement programs in the U.S. in developing our program.
We are evaluating our program through a contract with a nationally recognized research firm that is experienced in evaluating marital improvement and abstinence education programs. The firm provides statistical analysis as well as training and technical assistance to increase the program’s capacity to conduct effective program evaluations. Baseline data was collected and pre and post tests have been administered throughout the project to measure the effectiveness of our services
