Founded to combine Indigenous knowledge with modern behavioral health practices, the University of Arizona’s 7 Generations American Indian and Alaska Native Behavioral Health Center of Excellence is redefining support for Native American and Alaska Native communities across the nation.

The goal of the center, also known as the 7 Generations CoE, is to provide health care workers with culturally responsive training, technical assistance and policy expertise specific to American Indian and Alaska Native communities. The center works to reduce specific behavioral and mental health disparities among American Indian and Alaska Native populations, promote workforce development in those communities and train the next generation of behavioral health leadership. 

“The 7 Generations CoE serves as a resource to behavioral health care providers, community-based and faith-based organizations, research institutions and federal entities,” said Teshia Solomon, the center’s co-principal investigator and an associate professor of family and community medicine. “We don’t deliver direct care, but rather support those who do. The goal is to facilitate workforce development to meet the needs of health care providers, and to inform policy and practices for them.”

The center was founded in 2023 with a $7.5 million, five-year grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The program is co-directed by the university’s American Indian Research Center for Health, a collaborative project involving the Department of Family and Community Medicine in the College of Medicine – Tucson and the Southwest Institute for Research on Women, housed in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

“However, the program is truly led by its national steering council,” said Claudia Powell, 7 Generations CoE principal investigator and associate director of the Southwest Institute for Research on Women. “The national steering council is comprised of 18 tribal leaders from around the country who have expertise in the complex balance between Indigenous approaches to healing and western behavioral health models. At the foundation of 7 Generations is the truth that Indigenous people know where the strengths and opportunities exist for their communities, and the CoE is here to support those initiatives.”

The strategies and specific actions needed to implement and achieve the center’s goals are drafted by its national steering council.

“In our first year, the national steering council held several meetings, including one in-person in Alaska this summer,” Solomon said. “We also created a Healer’s Circle to provide cultural wisdom to center activities that includes 12 members from multiple tribal nations.”

In addition to Powell and Solomon, Brenda Granillo, an associate research professor at the Southwest Institute for Research on Women, directs the 7 Generations leadership academy as well as outreach and engagement efforts. Courtney Waters, an assistant research professor with the Southwest Institute for Research on Women, leads the 7 Generations training and technical assistance program.

The center’s first leadership academy, a mentorship-supported training program for emerging behavioral health professionals, is expected to graduate its first cohort from the 18-month program in May 2026. 

The center’s training program is still in development but will be divided into four elements: online courses and training seminars, multimedia community spotlights on successful programs, a nationwide network of training professionals, and workforce development opportunities to build capacity for community health care workers. Waters said the program will be aimed at assisting both Native and non-Native behavioral health professionals who serve American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

“A culturally responsive training and technical assistance program offers an expansive definition of behavioral health in which Indigenous knowledge and practices are centered, collective resilience is celebrated, traditional healing is fostered, and colonial legacies are challenged,” Waters said. “This approach is critical to our mission to improve behavioral health in AIAN communities because it acknowledges that the solutions already exist, and always have, within the communities and their people.”