NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-term® Initiative (NIH HEAL Initiative®)

In response to the virtual March 31, 2022 Tribal Consultation on the Helping to End Addiction Long-term® Initiative, or NIH HEAL Initiative®, NIH is incorporating Tribal input into the development of culturally relevant and appropriate research strategies that address the ongoing opioid crisis, which worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic and has had a particularly heavy public health burden on American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities. The purpose of this Consultation was to request input from Tribal Nations about their priority areas of research interest and research-related needs to address the opioid crisis and support new strategies to improve chronic pain management and opioid misuse, addiction, and overdose in AI/AN communities. NIH efforts will seek to build on input from the 2018 Consultation and continue to adapt research strategies to fully address the local needs of AI/AN communities, which have experienced disproportionately high overdose deaths from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl and stimulants like methamphetamines, and chronic pain. Research efforts also, by necessity, take into account the challenges related to strained healthcare systems and health inequities, stress, uncertainty, and social isolation that have had a heavy burden on AI/AN communities.