Christine Braunworth is a senior at the University of Nevada, Reno and she is determined to make an impact in the Native American community. Braunworth, who will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in social work this spring, recently helped secure a $10,000 grant from Native STAND, a comprehensive, sustainable curriculum for training peer educators who promote healthy decision making for Native youth.

Braunworth, a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, is just one of 16 national applicants selected for the grant. She will head to Portland, Ore. this June for an educator training program where she will spend one week learning the comprehensive curriculum related to the program that she will then bring back and implement with Pyramid Lake High School freshmen starting in August 2015.

Native STAND is adapted from STAND, Students Together Against Negative Decisions, a peer educator curriculum developed for youth in rural Georgia. It has been evaluated and is theoretically based, with a comprehensive approach to healthcare. It is based on the principle that all youth, including Native youth, face extreme pressures to fit in and belong. Peer educators are trained and put in place in order to help teens make the best decisions for themselves based on factual, science-based information but delivered in a way teens relate to, by people who they can trust and feel comfortable talking to.

The program will be offered as the freshmen health and nutrition course. Curriculum used focuses on positive personal development including team building, diversity, self-esteem, goals and values, decision making, negotiation and refusal skills, peer educator skills and effective communications.

“This grant provides the opportunity to support positive programming for the students at Pyramid Lake High School,” Braunworth said. “Since tribal healthcare is very different from western healthcare, our goal is to implement a curriculum that is already infused with Native American culture. This grant will allow students to see what western healthcare is like and experience what it’s like when you integrate the two.”

Braunworth applied for the grant during her time working as the intertribal higher education program intern in The Center for Student Cultural Diversity at the University. Working with Saundra Mitrovich, the coordinator of outreach and retention at The Center, Braunworth was coached and taught how to write and submit the grant proposal.

“This was the perfect opportunity for Christine to work on,” Mitrovich said. “It offered her a way to make a long-lasting educational impact in a community she’s passionate about being a part of. Additionally, it taught her the ins and outs of writing a grant proposal.”

Braunworth is looking forward to introducing Pyramid Lake students to the University.

“As part of the program, we will be touring students through the University of Nevada School of Medicine Outreach Clinic,” Braunworth said. “For many it will be their first time at the University and also their first time in a medical clinic. They will get the opportunity to recognize what services are offered here on campus and in the community.”