U’s Center of American Indian and Minority Health expands to Minneapolis campus

The University of Minnesota’s medical school hosted the grand opening of the expanded Center of American Indian and Minority Health in Minneapolis on Tuesday. 

The Center of American Indian and Minority Health was officially launched in 1987 and is based at the university’s medical school in Duluth. The center focuses on research, education and programming to positively impact American Indian and Alaskan Native health. 

The new location puts the center in closer proximity to some of its collaborators, including organizations and K-12 schools it works with on programs. 

Dr. Mary Owen is the director of the Center of American Indian and Minority Health and the associate dean of Native American Health at the University of Minnesota Medical School. She said the center has long worked towards improving health outcomes for Native communities by increasing the number of Native physicians.  

“We need more of us representing medicine, representing health care, so that we can help fine tune the care that that occurs for Native patients,” said Owen. 

Medical students at the Duluth campus spend the first two years of their studies there and then move to the Twin Cities medical school campus for their remaining education. Until now, the center’s resources were mainly available to students during the years spent at the Duluth campus. According to Owen, the center needed to expand to support more students.  

“Our students in years three and four have to transfer down to the Twin Cities. So our office down [in Minneapolis] … will support the students in years three and four,” said Owen.  

“It’ll also, and this is really important, give us opportunity to recruit more students from that Twin Cities area into the programs, and hopefully we’ll increase the numbers of Natives applying from the Twin Cities.”  

According to data published in 2023 by the Association of American Medical Colleges, about 0.3 percent of practicing physicians in the U.S. are American Indian or Alaskan Native, which is low in comparison to the overall population of at least 1.3 percent.  

Cailean Dakota MacColl is an Indigenous medical student heading into their third year of the program and said they have benefited from the center’s support.

MacColl comes from a background of traditional healers who rely on plant medicine. At the center in Duluth, they said utilizing plant medicine like sage for the cultural practice of smudging is a common occurrence.  

“I was in there almost every day, smudging and studying and just kind of being in that space that felt like a soft place to land,” MacColl said,

Owen explained that care was something Indigenous communities had figured out thousands of years ago. “We had well established ways of caring for us and our communities long before contact, … that were great and that we know could be integrated into the Western models of care and improve the health outcomes for a lot of people.” 

MacColl said they feel lucky that the new Twin Cities location is ready for the next cohort of medical students.  

“There are so few of us. And community is vital to my well-being and success, so being able to build community here in that space is going to be really important,” MacColl said. 

The new center is in a repurposed portion of the Mayo Building on the medical school campus and is decorated by Native artwork.  

Amanda Dionne is the assistant director for the Center of American Indian and Minority Health and leads the programming at the expanded location. 

“When students are within our space, they'll have the opportunity to connect with the center representative, as well as have places to study and learn together,” she said. “And then we also have a full kitchen.”

Dionne said the center’s resources will also support Native students pursuing careers in all facets of health, broadening services to Native students across graduate health programs, including veterinary, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy and public health. 

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