Urban Native American communities experience significant and persistent inequities in cardiovascular disease, obesity and hypertension yet despite decades of research, evidence-based interventions (EBIs) have failed to achieve significant improvement in health disparities. 

Indigenous health promotion aligns EBIs with the broader context of cultural and community assets such as indigenous knowledge (IK) and orientations towards sovereignty and self-determination, as well as a recognition of structural contexts framed by racism and colonization including historical trauma, land access, material resources, and disproportionate risks of violence and pollution. 

BRAID assesses facilitators and barriers to implementing an innovative afterschool health promotion program that mobilizes cultural knowledge and community relations to re-connect youth to health and health identity through their original instructions, stewardship practices, traditional foods, wooden stick lacrosse and other physical activities.

Project BRAID is hosted in both the Twin Cities and Duluth, Minnesota