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

> **NIH NIH K01** · JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $183,970

## 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
pu...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9952684
- **Project number:** 1K01MH122702-01
- **Recipient organization:** JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Victoria O’Keefe
- **Activity code:** K01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $183,970
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2020-07-01 → 2025-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9952684

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9952684, The Elders' Resilience Curriculum: Toward Building Empirical Evidence for a Culturally Grounded American Indian Youth Suicide Prevention Intervention (1K01MH122702-01). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9952684. Licensed CC0.

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