Center's director focuses on outreach

Sexual health education can a difficult topic to introduce to rural communities, but one woman at Salish and Kootenai College is working to make it a common conversation throughout the Flathead Valley.

Niki Graham, Salish tribal member and native to the Flathead Indian Reservation, said she felt throughout her childhood that sex and the risks tied to it were viewed as a dirty thing to talk about.

“I grew up in Ronan, and in schooling there was very little talk about sexual health other than around a menstrual cycle,” Graham said. “We were given the scary big black book of STDs and told not to do it.”

As the Director of the Center for Prevention and Wellness at Salish and Kootenai College, Graham has worked with a small team of staff to create public health outreach within the valley and among tribal nations for 12 years.

As someone who saw a variety of preventable diseases impact her community, Graham knew she wanted to be part of the healing effort. But she expected her future in the medical field to take the shape of a practicing physician, not an educator.

“In college, my mind was blown away with other ways to talk about sexual health, to make it a conversation,” Graham said. “I started to think maybe I could prevent instead of fix ­­— to work with people at a younger age, maybe if they understood risks and consequences tied to their body, we could find ways for disease to never happen.”

Graham said her work at the Prevention and Wellness Center has been a balancing act of introducing more resources to her community while finding respectful ways to talk about traditionally taboo topics.

When Graham came on board in 2004, the Center’s focus was advocating for clinics serving American Indians to offer HIV testing in remote areas.

“We started off by offering presentations on different reservations on the importance of HIV testing, and the common question was ‘How do we do this?’ and we realized if we weren’t doing it, how could we ask other sites to?” Graham said.

Within weeks of being hired, Graham dove into grant writing to create new programs. She turned in the 85-page application in the fall and by January, money from the Department of Health and Human Services came through for the center to begin HIV testing and increase prevention services.

“When we started initiating some testing, we realized there were a lot of other issues in regards to sexual health that wasn’t being talked about or treated in our area,” she said.

So again, she went back to grant writing.

In 2005, the Center created Native Women for HOPE, a community social-skills training intervention effort aimed at reducing sexual risk behavior. Today, the program is being evaluated to see if its practices can be repeated throughout the country.

In 2009, the Center began Women 4 Wellness, an annual health fair that breaks down social barriers to talk about health disparities within the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe areas and connects people to services that reduce health risks.

The Center’s partnerships have also expanded. The prevention and wellness center has partnered with the Tribal BEAR project, which brings culturally sensitive training directly to busy tribal clinic providers, nurses, behavioral health, outreach, and other staff in Montana, Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

Graham said today, the Center’s confidential work varies from passing out condoms to connecting victims of assault with resources for long-term recovery. Instead of just advocating for STD testing, the Center has grown to offer a variety of testing itself. It’s also developed programs around mental health services and supporting survivors of rape, abuse and addiction.

“But we’re living on soft money, which is a huge issue,” Graham said. “Tribally, we have huge struggles in trying to fit in federal guidelines and the objectives coming from D.C. That’s why we have to get very creative.”

She said every dollar in the Center is grant funded. The only program with sure funding each year is Women 4 Wellness, she said. That leaves other services in question at the end of each grant season.

“I know we’re saving lives here. My ultimate goal is to find sustainable funding that allows us to address the needs that we identify, that’s the dream,” Graham said. “Beyond that, the goal is to be creative, to have fun with learning, to make sure people feel safe in our department so we can find ways to give the help they need.”

For more information on the Center for Prevention and Wellness, go to http://prevention.skc.edu or call 406.275.4913.

Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.