Dental health aide therapists in Alaska have been successfully providing services to rural Native villages since 2006. Photo from Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium / Facebook
The Community Health Aide Program in Alaska continues to grow. The program's certification board recently approved 171 health aides to work in Native communities across the state. Of those, 28 were certified for the first time and 143 were certified at a higher lever or renewed their certification, the Indian Health Service announced on Wednesday. “Community health aides are proven partners in health and I am very happy to congratulate the newly certified health aides on their hard work to gain the skills necessary for this achievement,” Mary L. Smith, the leader of the IHS, said in a press release. “This program to bring more health workers to Alaska Native communities has proven to be very successful. We are currently consulting with tribal leaders about the possibility of increasing the use of community health aides as part of IHS’s ongoing commitment to provide access to quality health care to Alaska Native and American Indian patients.” The community health aide program includes a total of 488 certified aides and practitioners across the state, according to the IHS. They have been trained in behavioral health, dental health, maternal and child health and other fields. “Community health aides are the back bone of care in remote Alaska and are selected by their communities to receive training,” said Andrew McLaughlin, the chairdman of the certification board. “The CHAP program is proof that under geographical constraints, the Indian Health Service and tribal programs together accomplish and deliver a higher standard of medical care to underserved and remote populations.” The program has been successful in Alaska so the IHS is asking tribes about expanding it nationwide. A draft policy and Dear Tribal Leader letter went out in June.
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