Tlingit & Haida wins $1.44 million to screen students in eight Southeast Alaska schools

A federal grant of $1,437,982 to the Central Council Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska will put mental health screening and prevention into eight schools serving roughly 1,845 K-12 students in Juneau, Chatham, Hoonah and Wrangell.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration signed the award, numbered H79SM092722, on Sept. 17. The five-year project period runs Sept. 30, 2026, through Sept. 29, 2031. The record shows one obligation against it, not a five-year total.

The tribe will staff the program with non-clinical youth wellness workers rather than clinicians, according to the award record. Tier 1 is universal prevention using the tribe's own curriculum, plus Youth Mental Health First Aid, QPR suicide-alert training and ASQ suicide-screening questions. Tier 2 is brief intervention and referral through the tribe's Community Behavioral Health Department. Tier 3 is crisis stabilization through the CBS Healing Center, the Indian Health Service, the Native consortium SEARHC and the 988 crisis line.

By the end of year one, the project aims to reach 85 percent of students and 80 percent of staff with Tier 1 programming and screen every student whose family consents.

Project AWARE is competitive: SAMHSA budgeted $55,768,191 for roughly 31 awards nationally, capped at $1.5 million per year, with at least three reserved for tribes or tribal organizations, according to the funding notice. No match was required.

A state epidemiology bulletin found Alaska Native youth aged 10 to 18 died by suicide at 47 per 100,000, against 9 per 100,000 for White youth. Trevor Storrs, president and chief executive of the Alaska Children's Trust, told the House Finance Committee on April 22 that Kids Count data show two of every five Alaska high school students report feeling consistently sad or hopeless for an extended period in the previous year, a nearly 60 percent increase in the past decade.

SAMHSA's own review of school screening cautions that the tools miss real problems and flag apparent ones that are not there.

The award record contains no statement from the tribe, the districts, or families.