Health Care, Environmental Hazards, And Building Trust...

Step 1: Gather information and identify preliminary issues. In this case, the most important issues are inadequate access to health care, environmental hazards, behavioral risk factors, and building trust with the Narragansett community. The first three issues are important because they directly affect the health of the Native American population. Additionally, building trust with the Narragansett tribe in order to perform research and collaborative planning is the key to designing successful care programs specifically for the Narragansett Indian Tribe. The first key issue is regarding Native Americans’ insufficient access to health care. With the percentage of unemployment within the Native American population in Rhode Island as high as 26 percent (The Office of Minority Health, 2015), â€Å"one-third of Native American adults said there was a time in the past year when they could not afford to see a doctor† (Parrish, 2012). There is not many people from the tribe can afford health access due to the fact that 42.2 percent of th e Native American population is living in poverty (The Office of Minority Health, 2015). Aside from inadequate access to health care, some of the environmental health hazards that Native Americans are often exposed to include â€Å"surface and groundwater pollution, air pollution, hazardous waste, highway run-off, illegal dumping, lead paint, radon, and biological and chemical contamination of drinking water† (Parrish, 2012). According to the Environmental