Gameon, Julie A.McNamee, AlexFiremoon, PaulaSkewes, Monica C.2024-12-042024-09Gameon, J. A., McNamee, A., FireMoon, P., & Skewes, M. C. (2024). The Role of Complicated Grief in Health Inequities in American Indian Communities. Journal of Prevention and Health Promotion, 5(2-3), 374-401. https://doi.org/10.1177/263207702412677142632-0770https://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/18990Complicated grief is both a cause and a consequence of health inequities in Native (American Indian/Alaska Native [AI/AN]) communities. Given disproportionately high rates of physical (e.g., cancer, diabetes, and heart disease) and mental health problems (e.g., substance use disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder) in Native communities, it is common for AI/AN people to suffer many losses each year. Experiences of traumatic or repeated losses may lead to the development of maladaptive grief, often known as complicated grief. The aim of the current study was to understand the perspectives of community members on grief and its connection with health inequities among AI people who have experienced the loss of a person with whom they were close. Using a community-based participatory research framework, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 AI adults from a rural reservation community. The ages of the participants ranged from 32 to 80 years (M = 54.33, SD = 14.46) and women (n = 7, 58.3%) and men (n = 5, 41.7%) were included. The participants reported many barriers to healthy grieving and linked chronic, complicated grief with the development of multifaceted health problems, which were seen as exacerbating health disparities and leading to additional losses and grief. While coping with loss was difficult, many people were able to heal from extraordinary losses through community support and cultural practices. Future research with AI/AN communities is needed to develop, implement, and evaluate culturally responsive therapeutic grief treatments. There is also a pressing need to address current physical and mental health inequities to reduce the mortality rate and, thus, complicated grief in AI/AN communities.en-USCopyright SAGE Publications 2024. Julie A. Gameon et al, The Role of Complicated Grief in Health Inequities in American Indian Communities, Journal of Prevention and Health Promotion (, ) pp. . Copyright © 2024. DOI: 10.1177/26320770241267714. Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference. For permission to reuse an article, please follow our Process for Requesting Permission.https://web.archive.org/web/20200107110644/https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/journal-author-archiving-policies-and-re-use, https://web.archive.org/web/20200409113510/https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/posting-to-an-institutional-repository-green-open-accessAmerican Indiancomplicated griefqualitativehealth inequitiesArticle10.1177/26320770241267714