tional Health Objectives for the Year 2000 as well as the objectives of the Indian Health Service. Each set of objectives establish priorities for the reduction of behavioral risks associated with the development of FAS (Sugarman, Warren, Oge, & Helgerson, 1996).
The IHS funds programs intended to help attain the objective of reducing the incidence of FAS among Native-American populations. One of these programs is the Seattle Indian Alcohol Program (SIAP), which provides the focus in this assessment of Public-Law 100-713 (Kelley, 1992).
All Native-Americans who are members of recognized Indian tribes in the United States are eligible to participate in those programs funded by the IHS under the provisions of Public Law 100-713. The SIAP Program serves a metropolitan area with the seventh largest urban Native-American population concentration in the United States (Sugarman & Grossman, 1996).
The SIAP is unique in that Native-Americans designed and implemented the program based on their own perceptions of the needs of their community (Kelley, 1992). SIAP is a model inter-disciplinary program drawing as much on anthropology as on the science of medicine (Sugarman & Grossman, 1996).
One problem has been the requirement that participants in the SIAP be members of recognized Indian tribes (Kelley, 1992). Some individuals who are part Native-American have difficulty documenting their membership status in a recognized Indian tribe, and this problem tends to affect women more than men. Nevertheless, most of these individuals perceive of themselves as Native-Americans, and any behavioral risks that may affect their lives are consistent with those that tend to affect Native-American populations (Gordis, 1994). This means that the eligibility requirement could potentially exclude some Native-American women who are in need of the SIAP services.
The SIAP is comprehensive in approach, a program that incorporates identificati...