Needs Assessment Gives Michigan Tribal PREP Grantee a Boost

The Intertribal Council of Michigan ’s (ITCM) Maternal Child Health program covers a lot of ground and a lot of people. Six tribal communities across both of the state’s peninsulas, to be exact. When the organization received a Tribal Personal Responsibility Education Program (Tribal PREP) grant in 2016, PREP Project Director Lisa Abramson wanted to use it to understand those groups’ needs, and to ensure that ITCM’s teen pregnancy program met them.

Abramson and her colleagues partnered with the Michigan Public Health Institute (MPHI) to create a needs assessment for these tribal groups. Crucially, they sought tribal perspective and input at every stage.

“We have good relationships with these communities and were able to do a youth survey, key informant interviews, focus groups, and analysis of different resources within the communities,” Abramson says.

As designed by MPHI, the youth survey had a core set of topics that were asked at all six sites: demographics, typical risk behaviors, mental health challenges, and more. But ITCM and MPHI sought insights and suggestions from tribal members as well. Allison Morey, a Project Coordinator and Evaluation Specialist with MPHI, says that tribal members helped perfect word choices on the surveys. They also offered suggestions for other topics that MPHI hadn’t considered, including nutrition and marijuana use.

Based on a suggestion from these community members, MPHI also included a “youth asset” survey to measure family and child communication, non-parent role models, and community engagement. These questions led to a fuller understanding of the young people’s lives and relationships, not just their risk behaviors.

When the survey and needs assessment were complete, ITCM had a fuller picture of the people they serve. They also had a roadmap for improving services. They chose a new program for teen relationship health, We R Native , that they felt suited the work ahead. Then they brought in the consultant Nicole Trevino to adapt it for their communities.

“We’re just getting started with implementation,” says Lisa Abramson. “In the past we’ve used a different curriculum but this time there’s a lot of excitement because the topics really range and the [tribal] sites understand how it’s connected to the needs that youth identified.”

ITCM has set benchmarks for reaching a certain number of young people each year. But they hope to evaluate individual outcomes as well. “After a couple years it will be interesting to see if youth who participate in [our] events have different outcomes from those who didn’t,” Abramson adds. “Our evaluation design is really interesting and hopefully we’ll see results in the outcome evaluation.”

That community buy-in has been essential. ITCM has asked tribes to consider how the curriculum and teen classes can connect to their cultural teachings. Connection to local and family traditions is an important protective factor for native youth.

Singing Abramson and her colleagues’ praises, Nicole Trevino says, “So much care has gone into crafting the needs assessment and curriculum design. They have been so focused on community engagement and service. You don’t see that often in these programs. Careful engagement doesn’t happen all the time, and this is a model to watch so we see what comes out of it. You can engage a community every step of the way.”