Confronting the urgent health-care needs of Native Americans, the Gila River Indian Community has awarded a $200,000 grant to A.T. Still University in Mesa to recruit and educate Native Americans as health-care professionals.

American Indian communities have been plagued for years with high rates of chronic illnesses such as diabetes, high-blood pressure and cardiovascular and kidney disease while access to health care among Native Americans has been limited and Native American health-care providers are in extremely short supply.

The grant will enable A.T. Still University's National Center for American Indian Health Professions to provide guidance and support to American Indian students who may be the first in their families to pursue higher education and for whom a four-year college can represent a significant financial hardship.

Under the Native Early Acceptance Team (NEAT) program, will identify students early in their academic careers to create a pipeline of Native health-care providers who will return to their communities after graduation.

The grant brings to $500,000 the total amount the Gila River community has given the university's Indian health professions program for outreach in just five years.

Through NEAT, the university will recruit American Indian high-school and community-college students and connect them with academic, financial, emotional and cultural support services that will ensure their progress from high school to college to graduate health-care study at ATSU and, finally, to careers in health care within their own Native communities.

The students will also be advised on academic performance, college- and graduate-school prerequisites and preparatory courses, financial aid and scholarships and college visits.

The program also helps create partnerships among tribal leaders, tribal educators and local, state and regional higher-education organizations.

Existing partners include the Arizona Commission on Indian Affairs, Pathways into Health, Roadways into Health, the Phoenix Indian Medical Center, Greater Valley Area Health Education Center, the Northern Arizona Area Health Education Center and Health Occupations Students of America.

Douglas Wood, the university's senior vice president for academic affairs, said "the generosity of the Gila River Indian Community will allow ATSU to step up its outreach to the large American Indian community in Arizona and the surrounding states. GRIC is making it possible for ATSU to address the serious health-care challenges Native communities face and to pursue ATSU's founding mission of serving the underserved."

A.T. Still University's National Center for American Indian Health Professions is the only graduate university health-care program dedicated to eliminating the health-care gap between Native communities and the general population.