Teaching Planetary Health at the Faculty of Medicine of Geneva: A Student-Led Initiative

## **Addressing COVID-19 in the Arctic: Lessons from Indigenous Communities in Alaska**

**Michele Devlin, Andrey Petrov, Mark Welford, Tatiana Degai, John DeGroote, Stanislav Ksenofontov, Nikolay Golosov, and Nino Mateshvili** University of Northern Iowa ARCTICenter, Cedar Falls, United States

The Arctic region as a whole is home to approximately 4 million people in eight countries. Indigenous populations in this extreme terrain comprise a minority of the residents in the circumpolar area globally but are among the most adept and resilient at surviving extremely demanding conditions. The global COVID pandemic has brought unique challenges to these native populations in already harsh Arctic environments. Although the experiences of Indigenous populations are often left out of social science research, these native groups have much to share with the world. For example, since the start of the COVID pandemic, many native populations have experienced disproportionately high rates of morbidity and mortality from this disease due to unique geographic, cultural, financial, political, social, and other barriers to care. However, others have been quite effective in adopting a number of culturally appropriate policies and programs to mitigate the harm that COVID can bring to their communities. For example, a number of Indigenous organizations in Arctic regions have developed deliberate, culturally appropriate strategies to address COVID. The University of Northern Iowa ARCTICenter conducted a literature review of publicly available news articles, media reports, and press releases that shared the experiences of native populations in Alaska in addressing the COVID pandemic. This poster presentation provides a number of culturally appropriate strategies utilized by tribal organizations in the American Arctic to address this infectious disease outbreak. Policies such as prioritizing the health needs of elders, utilizing community health aides in rural villages as pandemic prevention partners, promoting native language storytelling about the disease, and supporting teams of outreach nurses to provide vaccinations in remote areas are but a few of the numerous lessons that many Alaskan native groups can teach other Arctic communities faced with keeping their populations safe from COVID.

#### Study Goals and Objectives

• Examine strategies utilized by Alaska communities to address the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Identify lessons learned in Alaskan communities applicable to other remote

locations and Indigenous communities.

#### Methods

We conducted a review of secondary data from Alaskan health department websites, newspapers, tribal policy statements, and other public sources. We also collected data on COVID-19 infections, deaths, vaccinations, and health- related socioeconomic variables for Alaskan regions.

#### **OVERALL RESPONSE FRAMEWORK DELAY** ➔ **PREPARE** ➔ **RESPOND/ INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGEENGAGE**

A successful response framework in the Alaska indigenous communities has been to (1) delay the onset of the pandemic by strict isolation and prevention measures; (2) prepare for the arrival of the disease by relying on the Alaska Native Health System; and (3) respond to the pandemic by coupling a self-governed health system with Indigenous knowledge, including by holistically addressing health through community, spiritual, and traditional cultural lenses.

### Findings: Key Implemented Strategies


### Conclusions

Arctic Indigenous communities in Alaska frequently adopted diverse strategies to manage the pandemic in their communities that likely mitigated the impact that COVID-19 could have had on their communities. With the growing reality that climate change, human migration, urbanization, and globalization will likely increase the frequency and severity of novel pandemics around the world, the strategies used by Arctic Indigenous populations to mitigate COVID-19 can provide important lessons for other populations faced with extreme vulnerability to infectious diseases.

Abstract: Indigenous populations around the world are among the most vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, and many Native communities have experienced disproportionately high morbidity and mortality rdaut e to the disease. These disparities have occurred, in part, due to language barriers, limited political power, insufficient sovereign rights, restricted control over resources, lack of culturally specific programming, higher levels of predisposing conditions such as respiratory conditions and diabetes, geographic isolation, dense housing, communal practices, and other factors. However, some Indigenous communities have been models of resiliency and tribal teamwork in fighting COVID- 19, so that the disease would not have the same deadly impact that tuberculosis, smallpox, and influenza had in their midst in earlier generations. Due to their extreme remoteness and often limited resources, Arctic indigenous populations have been particularly active in implementing creative strategies to mitigate COVID-19. The analysis of COVID-19 related strategies shows that within the Arctic region of Alaska, US, many Indigenous communities have adopted a variety of programs and policies and engaged Indigenous knowledge to control and respond to the spread of COVID-19 in their villages, making some communities more resilient to the pandemic than others. This experience could be useful for other regions and future pandemics. *This research is supported by NSF grant # 2034886.*
