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We present the design of a mHealth application aimed at improving mental health outcomes among young adults representing a Native American population. This study evaluates the application’s effectiveness and user-friendliness, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of its performance utilizing the uMARS (Mobile Application Rating Scale) protocol specifically designed to assess the quality of mobile health applications. Our findings indicate that the design meets both customers’ (young adults) and experts’ (mobile development practitioners) perceptions of the app. Our limitation is the lack of data collection from the population representing the Native American tribe. 

Despite significant cultural strengths and knowledge, Indigenous people around the world experience substantial health inequities due to the historic and ongoing impacts of settler colonialism. As information and communication technologies (ICTs) are increasingly used as part of health interventions to help bridge equity gaps, it is important to characterize and critically evaluate how ICT-facilitated health interventions are designed for and used by Indigenous people. This critical literature review queried articles from three archives focused on health and technology with the goal of identifying cross-cutting challenges and opportunities for ICT-facilitated health interventions in Indigenous communities. Importantly, we use the lens of decolonization to understand important issues that impact Indigenous sovereignty, including the incorporation of Indigenous Knowledge and engagement with data sovereignty. 

To broaden indigenous students' participation in Computer Science (CS) education, we conducted a research practitioner partnership (RPP) project, where teachers were taught the CS principles lessons offered by Code.org and asked to integrate mobile application development within their current courses. Additionally, modules and guidance were provided on culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP), and an in-classroom implementation of a five-day lesson plan was co-created via a participatory approach. In this experience report, we describe the RPP organization and early findings from our collected teachers' pre/post survey, lesson plans, projects, and students' pre/post survey. The positive outcomes from our RPP project provided valuable teacher learning experiences and actionable, culturally responsive computing lesson plans for the indigenous community. 

Session presenters/authors have worked to support STEM education in Native American serving schools for many years. During the last few years, substantial progress has been made towards capacity-building and sustaining culturally sustaining STEM activity. This session will highlight the ways that improved communication and collaboration among project partners (teachers, teacher educators, school administrators, community members, STEM professionals) have supported this progress. Recommendations for Native American STEM partnerships based on these experiences will be shared in this session. 

Session presenters/authors have worked to support STEM education in Native American serving schools for many years. During the last few years, substantial progress has been made towards capacity-building and sustaining culturally sustaining STEM activity. This session will highlight the ways that improved communication and collaboration among project partners (teachers, teacher educators, school administrators, community members, STEM professionals) have supported this progress. Recommendations for Native American STEM partnerships based on these experiences will be shared in this session. 

Despite high incidence of depression, anxiety, and post traumatic stress disorder, stigma and lack of access to culturally responsive behavioral health care resources prevents many Native Americans (NA) from seeking care. However, the rise of culturally-responsive in-person and digital behavioral health resources for NA communities provides new opportunities to address these longstanding health equity issues. The major challenge is helping people in NA communities find these meaningful resources and helping anchor institutions understand how resources are being sought and utilized to support more responsive internal programming. In this context, we have partnered with Hopi Behavioral Health Services (HBHS) to design the Resilience Resource Database to digitally disseminate mental and behavioral health resources. This paper presents initial findings that have resulted from the initial stage of an iterative participatory design process with HBHS. 

As the push to increase computer science (CS) education access for all students in the U.S. grows across states and regions, schools that work with traditionally underserved populations such as Native Americans (NA) have a particular challenge in navigating this new landscape for educational systems. Most curriculum in CS can be hard to implement in schools that have not yet developed the capacity of their staff to teach CS due to the rigid sequence of topics and skills. One approach to expanding CS into these settings is to work with content area teachers to develop mobile apps that not only relate to their content but can also expose students to CS skills. The NSF-funded project Let’s Talk Code recognizes the unique opportunities for Native American-serving schools and has developed an approach that could have broad appeal for secondary schools that do not have well-developed CS programs but want to increase access to CS for their students through an integrated approach that can also connect to sustaining language and culture.