# BCC-CCM Student and Faculty Career Development Project

> **NIH NIH S06** · BLACKFEET COMMUNITY COLLEGE · 2021 · $464,101

## Abstract

The ultimate goal of this project is to improve the mental and physical health of the Blackfeet Nation and to
address our health problems through the development of a sustainable Blackfeet Community College Center
for Culture as Medicine (BCC-CCM). The Blackfeet and other Native peoples experience severe heath
disparities, and, arguably, the best qualified individuals to address these disparities are Native researchers.
However, there are precious few Native investigators with health research expertise and few sustainable health
research centers within Native communities that are controlled by the community. The Blackfeet community
has indicated that one of its primary health concerns is mental health, and it also has indicated the desire for
community members to address this problem themselves. Thus, this capacity building project, entitled BCC-
Student and Faculty Research Development (BCC-SFRD), will enhance the capacity of BCC to develop the
BCC-CCM that will strive to mitigate the high incidence of mental health disease among the Blackfeet
population. Leveraging the work initiated with a previous NARCH capacity building grant, BCC has begun to
build a research culture that has resulted in two scientific publications (1,2), a student research laboratory
capable of biomarker and survey analysis, and an intense interest among BCC faculty and administration and
the Blackfeet community to develop this application. The present project will leverage the progress, interest,
and preliminary data generated from the previous NARCH grant to build the human resources necessary for
the research center, including faculty and student researchers, as well as the means to make the center
sustainable. It also will be important to involve the Blackfeet community in all phases of the development and
function of the proposed center. In order to attain the goal of capacity building, we will accomplish the
following specific aims: 1. strengthen the research culture at BCC, 2. encourage and empower BCC
students to pursue biomedical research careers, and 3. develop a sustainable BCC Mental Health
Research Center at BCC. Previous NARCH funding focused only on capacity building but had significant
impact at BCC, positioning us to develop the present proposal. Thus, this proposal leverages and expands
previous successes. We expect that this proposal, if funded, would have even more impact, propelling BCC to
our goal of enhancing Blackfeet mental health and developing a sustainable BCC-CCM.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10198481
- **Project number:** 1S06GM141660-01
- **Recipient organization:** BLACKFEET COMMUNITY COLLEGE
- **Principal Investigator:** Dee Hoyt
- **Activity code:** S06 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $464,101
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2021-09-21 → 2025-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10198481

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10198481, BCC-CCM Student and Faculty Career Development Project (1S06GM141660-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10198481. Licensed CC0.

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