Our Strategic Plan

Effectiveness, Action, Excellence

The National Native Center of Excellence (NNCOE) is an Indigenous research, training and technical resource center that utilizes strength-based ways to serve Tribal Nations and Native Communities. With the leadership of NNCOE’s National Native Advisory Council, the Center’s work is focused in the intersecting fields of health and health equity within Indigenous concepts through a public health lens.

The NNCOE prioritizes community and tribally specific Indigenous knowledges, value systems, and cultural practices. Our scope of work encompasses substance misuse and addiction, suicide prevention, domestic violence prevention and prevention of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People. The National Native Center of Excellence is housed within the Lighthouse Institute, the research division of Chestnut Health Systems.

Our Approach

The philosophy of the NNCOE is to support solution-based initiatives coming from Indian Country, Alaska, and Hawaii and the deep wisdom and expertise within Native communities. NNCOE’s National Native Advisory Council (NNAC) helps guide the Center in collaboration with community members, Elders, and other leaders. Modeling healing-centered engagement, strength-based ways and non-prescriptive approaches grounded in Native science and Indigenous evidence-based practices, the NNCOE promotes materials, methods, and services that are culturally intrinsic and support increasing the quality of life for youth and families.

Foundation Pillars

Inclusivity

The NNCOE serves federally recognized Tribal Nations, state recognized Tribal Nations and Tribal Nations and communities which do not have U. S. and/or state recognition. We also serve Native Peoples residing in urban areas and rural areas off reservation.

Intellectual Sovereignty

The NNCOE promotes that Native peoples and communities are the experts on themselves, supporting self-determination and intellectual sovereignty in constructing knowledge, defining and prioritizing issues of importance, determining methodologies, implementing strategies, and interpreting results. 

Service

The NNCOE promotes the concept of service in our work and tribal and community partnerships within a practice of humility. The Center is designed to support, rather than prescribe, what can help save lives and contribute to the healing, strength, and resilience in our communities for our youth, families and relatives. 

Decolonization and Beyond

The NNCOE recognizes that futures rooted in healing and long term well-being must center Native culturally intrinsic research paradigms and ways of knowing, and place Indigenous ways of life as the standards of reference for all initiatives, emphasizing the importance of grounding work in sustainable community supports and relationships.