Indian Health Service. Each set of objectives establish priorities for reducing behavioral risks associated with the development of FAS (Sugarman, Warren, Oge, & Helgerson, 1996).
The IHS funds programs designed to work toward the attainment of the objective of reducing the incidence of FAS among Native-American populations. One of the programs so funded is the Seattle Indian Alcohol Program (SIAP). The SIAP 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 the programs funded by the IHS under the provisions of Public Law 100-713. The SIAP 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 needs (Kelley, 1992). SIAP is a model inter-disciplinary program that draws as much on anthropology as on the science of medicine (Sugarman & Grossman, 1996).
One problem area is the requirement that participants in the SIAP be members of recognized Indian tribes (Kelley, 1992). At times, individuals who are part Native-American experience difficulty in documenting membership status in a recognized Indian tribe. This situation tends to affect women more so than men. Nevertheless, most of these individuals continue to perceive of themselves as Native-Americans, and any behavioral risks that may characterize their lives are consistent with those that tend to characterize Native-American populations (Gordis, 1994). Thus, this eligibility requirement has the potential to exclude some Native-American women who are in need of the services offered by the SIAP.
The SIAP is comprehensive in approach. The program incorporates identification and referral, detoxification, intensive ...