ND MIECHV Innovation Grant

The North Dakota Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program collaborates with Spirit Lake and Turtle Mountain Nations to deliver culturally appropriate, community-driven home visiting services.

The ND MIECHV Innovation Grant will be developing a culturally competent, self-healing community model (SHCM) through implementation, education, and self-directed activities at the Turtle Mountain and Spirit Lake communities and statewide. These communities continue to suffer from historical trauma and other residual hardships, which SHCM addresses by strengthening resiliency and improving child and family outcomes. The purpose of the project is to empower MIECHV-implementing tribal communities to be self-healing and trauma-informed by strengthening resources and services, which will lead to better outcomes for children, families, and communities. A special focus of the Innovation Grant is reducing the increasing number of substance-exposed newborns in both Turtle Mountain and Spirit Lake.

The three goals of this project are:

1. To create trauma-informed community systems;
2. To empower communities to be self-healing; and
3. To identify and disseminate best practices and lessons learned through effective evaluation.

These goals will be achieved at three levels: state, community, and the MIECHV local implementing agency.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are stressful or traumatic events or occurrences, such as abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction, that affect brain development. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's ACE Study, headed by co-principal investigators Dr. Vincent Felitti and Dr. Robert Anda, found that these traumatic events are strongly related with many health issues throughout a person's lifetime, including early death.