White Earth Band of Chippewa Indians
through its Behavioral Health Division
Jurisdiction: The boundaries of the White Earth Reservation encompass 837,268 acres of land in Becker, Clearwater, and Mahnomen Counties in rural northwestern Minnesota.
According to 2015 U.S. Census data, American Indians in Minnesota represented 15.8 percent of those who entered treatment for opioid misuse despite representing only 1.1 percent of the state’s overall population. In 2012, treatment admission for heroin comprised only 7 percent of all admissions; in 2016, that figure rose to 22 percent. This project supported and expanded a systemwide initiative to mitigate and prevent mortality and morbidity associated with the opioid crisis as part of White Earth Nation Overdose Response Committee (WEN-ORC)—a data-focused workgroup composed of cross-sector stakeholders from public health, behavioral health, and public safety—that was formed in response to the crisis of opioid and heroin misuse on the White Earth Reservation. White Earth Nation adopted and implemented the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP) with the Tribal Health Department’s medical director, which provided the necessary support to enhance partnerships to use the data collected through ODMAP to develop overdose prevention and intervention strategies.