Improving health outcomes through better nutrition.

Native Americans are disproportionately impacted by poor physical health outcomes. Unfortunately, chronic illnesses such as type II diabetes, kidney disease, heart disease, and obesity are common among indigenous populations in the American Southwest.

That’s why we are teaming up with several of our community partners to implement a plant-centered nutrition intervention, with funding from the National Institute of Health.

Learn more about the Navajo Employee Wellness Project:

The intervention will be focused on helping improve the health of Navajo employees who are working at a casino in northern Arizona, by introducing a plant-centered nutrient-dense diet.
This project will focus on a couple of outcomes:
- Improving health outcomes with a plant-centered, nutrient dense diet.
  - We hope our study will help to improve metabolic measurements like blood sugar, cholesterol, triglycerides, and blood pressure.
  - We also hope that participants are able to improve other measures of wellness like mood, sleep quality, depression, and anxiety.
- Reducing participants’ healthcare costs.
  - We hope that as a bi-product of eating healthier foods, participants in our study will not need as much medical care, which could theoretically reduce their healthcare costs.
Participants will be recruited from among Navajo employees working at a local casino.
Over the course of 12 weeks, participants will receive nutrition education and resources to help them eat a culturally-relevant, micronutrient-dense, plant-rich diet.
Measurements of health will be assessed during and after the study.
We hope that our research will lay the groundwork for a greater focus on plant-centered nutrition among the Navajo people.
By showing how effective a micronutrient dense, plant-centered diet can be in improving health outcomes, we predict that more practitioners, healthcare organizations, and Diné people themselves will use the diet to improve health outcomes.

BY THE END OF THE STUDY, WE HOPE THAT PARTICIPANTS WILL BE ABLE TO:

Discuss important food-related Navajo teachings, history and nutrition science.
Demonstrate new skills related to meal planning and cooking.
Build their meals around health-promoting whole grains, vegetables, beans, fruits, nuts, seeds and water, and decrease intake of commercial/industrial animal products and highly processed foods that lack fiber.
Experience improved health, such as more energy, better blood sugar and blood pressure, weight loss if overweight, less constipation, acne, joint pain, and/or improved mood.
Bring this information to others who would benefit and are interested in claiming or regaining health.

“By reconnecting with traditional foods and revitalizing knowledge and practices around those foods the Navajo Nation can begin to proactively address…issues in ways that restore Hozho (holistic well-being).” ”

— Diné Food Sovereignty, Diné Policy Institute, April 2014