# Admin Supplement: The Elders' Resilience Curriculum: Toward Building Empirical Evidence for a Culturally Grounded American Indian Youth Suicide Prevention Intervention

> **NIH NIH K01** · JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $17,626

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Suicide disproportionately affects American Indian/Alaska Native (AI/AN) communities, with the
greatest burden experienced by AI/AN children and adolescents. A paucity of mental health
care resources in AI/AN settings points to a critical need to deliver suicide prevention
interventions outside conventional mental health clinical settings. Past research has shown
cultural protective factor approaches will be more effective than risk- focused interventions to
reduce AI/AN youth suicide. Culturally grounded (or “ground up”) prevention interventions—
which place local culture and values at the forefront of intervention design, implementation, and
evaluation—hold strong promise to prevent AI/AN youth suicide. However, we know little about
core components, mechanisms, and constructs through which culturally grounded interventions
can prevent suicide. The Elders’ Resilience Curriculum (ERC) is a school-based, culturally
grounded, suicide prevention intervention currently delivered by White Mountain Apache Tribe
(WMAT) Elders through monthly lessons about tribal cultural values, beliefs, ways of life, and
Apache language to youth ages 9-14, a nascent stage prior to the highest risk period for suicide
(15-24 years old) in this community. The proposed research builds upon the Johns Hopkins
Center for American Indian Health and WMAT’s 35+ year research and public health
partnership that continues to innovate and scale prevention interventions through community-
based participatory research. The candidate will engage with the tribal-university partners to
conduct an Exploratory Sequential Mixed Methods study to identify key suicide protective
factors and ERC core components that target these factors, refine a theoretical model
specifying causal mechanisms and outcomes, develop a culturally adapted assessment battery,
and pilot a rigorous evaluation to test the theoretical model and culturally adapted measures to
prepare for a larger R01 effectiveness study. If successful, new understanding of the
mechanisms and constructs through which ERC operates to prevent AI/AN youth suicide will
support replication and scaling of this intervention to other AI/AN communities suffering youth
suicide disparities. The proposed K01 will provide the candidate, who is from the
Cherokee/Seminole Nations, with critical training in qualitative and mixed methods research,
culturally grounded intervention design and evaluation, and child/adolescent development as it
relates to resiliency, cultural identity, and suicide prevention. The candidate will receive
guidance and targeted training from a mentorship team of national experts at the forefront of
Indigenous mental health prevention science. This K01 award will support her to become an
Indigenous NIMH independent investigator focused on culturally-informed, strengths-based
mental health promotion research. The proposed research and candidate’s career goals align
with NIMH Strategic Objective 4 to “strengthen the ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10975649
- **Project number:** 3K01MH122702-04S1
- **Recipient organization:** JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Victoria O’Keefe
- **Activity code:** K01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $17,626
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2020-07-01 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10975649

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10975649, Admin Supplement: The Elders' Resilience Curriculum: Toward Building Empirical Evidence for a Culturally Grounded American Indian Youth Suicide Prevention Intervention (3K01MH122702-04S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10975649. Licensed CC0.

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