Covering Indian Country – March 2022

March 2022

Spotlight: COVID-19 prevention toolkits for schools

COVID-19 vaccination, testing, and contact tracing all play a role in efforts to help K–12 students, teachers, and staff stay healthy.

As part of its We Can Do This campaign, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has created a school communities toolkit to increase confidence in and uptake of COVID-19 vaccines.

The HHS toolkit contains a variety of resources that school district leaders, teachers, parents, and school supporters can download, print, and share at their convenience.

Strategies to mitigate the risk for COVID-19 transmission in schools play a key role in efforts to help students, teachers, and staff stay safe and healthy.

Project SafeSchools, an ongoing initiative led by the Johns Hopkins Center for American Indian Health (JHCAIH), offers culturally appropriate materials that promote a layered approach to maintaining safe learning environments. Those materials include a COVID-19 school testing toolkit (PDF, 12.4 MB, 40 pp), which explains how to:

• Implement a testing program that appropriately meets a community’s needs
• Collect, manage, and distribute test results
• Conduct contact tracing

The Project SafeSchools toolkit also provides examples of school-based testing programs in action, a school testing checklist, a sample consent form, and more.

March: Support your health care team

Health observances

Additional resources

Funding opportunities

Calendar of events

Some events may be cancelled, postponed, or held virtually as public health officials monitor COVID-19 safety measures during this time. Please check the events’ pages for updates on event status.

Indian Health Service Webinars

Sponsored by the Indian Health Service (IHS) Tele-Behavioral Health Center of Excellence, the IHS tele-education webinars listed below are intended for health care team members.

Addictions and recovery webinar series (12 pm Eastern)
March 15: Drug Trends and Treatment Changes in 2020
March 22: Effective Psychotherapy – Matrix Model
March 29: Effective Psychotherapy – Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Relapse Prevention
April 5: Effective Psychotherapy – Seeking Safety
April 12: Effective Psychotherapy – Community Reinforcement Approach & Community Reinforcement Approach Family Therapy
April 19: Co-Occurring Medical Diagnoses in Substance Use Disorder
April 26: Basics of Addiction & Co-Occurring Mental Disorders

Pain and opioid use disorder webinar series (2 pm Eastern)
March 15: Synthetic Opioid Overdose

Context Clues: Using SDOH to Enhance Treatment

The Mid-America Mental Health Technology Transfer Center Network and Aetna Better Health of Kansas have developed the Context Clues webinar series to help health care providers and other interested parties identify and address social determinants of health (SDOH).

Register for the Context Clues webinars. Dates and topics of upcoming webinars are listed below.

March 17
Pediatric Sleep (1–1:30 pm Eastern)
Adolescent and Adult Sleep (1:30–2 pm Eastern)

April 21
Adjustment to Diagnosis (1–1:30 pm Eastern)
Adherence (1:30–2 pm Eastern)

Virtual CMS ITU Outreach and Education Trainings

The CMS Division of Tribal Affairs offers virtual trainings to benefit coordinators and business office, patient registration, medical records, and purchased/referred care services staff.

ITU staff are encouraged to register for the training for their respective IHS area, as the agendas will include area-specific issues and state Medicaid/CHIP presentations. However, you may register for other IHS area webinars if you are interested.

Please check CMS’s website periodically for more information as these virtual events are scheduled and opened for registration.

ACL/NICOA ITU Training Series
Now–April 19 (Tuesdays at 2 pm Eastern)

Upcoming Virtual ITU Trainings by IHS Area

Navajo: Weeks of March 21 and 28
Billings: Weeks of April 4 and 11 (mornings)
Portland: Weeks of April 4 and 11 (afternoons)
Albuquerque: Weeks of April 18 and 25
Oklahoma City: Weeks of May 9 and 16
California: Weeks of May 23 and 30
Great Plains: Weeks of June 6 and 13
Nashville: Weeks of June 20 and 27 (mornings)
Bemidji: Weeks of June 20 and 27 (afternoons)

Virtual Tribal Leaders Training Series

Now–April 21 on Thursdays at 2 pm Eastern
Register for the Tribal Leaders Training Series

CMS, in partnership with National Indian Health Board, is committed to enhancing tribes' ability to access third party resources. To that end, CMS invites tribal leaders, health directors, and health care administrators to join the Tribal Leaders Training Series. The series will cover programs and benefits available through Medicare, Medicaid, the Marketplace, and more.

Virtual National Tribal Public Health Summit

May 9–12
Register for the National Tribal Public Health Summit

This year’s National Tribal Public Health Summit will feature workshops and roundtables in 6 broad topic areas. Sponsored by National Indian Health Board, the summit will bring together public health professionals, researchers, and policy experts to discuss emerging and promising evidence-based practices in public, behavioral, and environmental health.

Contact us

Do you have news to share? Send it to coveringic@kauffmaninc.com for possible inclusion in an upcoming newsletter. Contact us with other comments or feedback, too.

About the newsletter

Covering Indian Country is published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Division of Tribal Affairs to share resources, success stories, and best practices with the people who connect tribal communities to health care coverage.

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