NenŨnkUmbi/Edahiyedo (We are Here Now or NE) is an evidence-based intervention designed to reduce sexual and reproductive health (SRH) disparities in American Indian youth ages 14 to 18 years old. This 9-month program includes the following four components:
We Are Here Now can be integrated and adapted in tribal communities, schools, clinics, and other community-based programs. The toolkit may be useful for communities interested in building their research capacity or implementing an evidence-based intervention to improve sexual and reproductive health outcomes.
Visit the We Are Here Now website to read their supporting publications.
Elizabeth Rink at elizabeth.rink@montana.edu
Olivia Johnson at ojohnson@fpcc.edu
Paula Firemoon at pfiremoon@fpcc.edu
We Are Here Now intervenes at the individual, family, cultural, and systems level. For the individual level, the original Native STAND lesson plans and curriculum were used to demonstrate how Tribal communities can adapted Native STAND for their specific cultural context as well as build in skill building and education for family members, cultural teachings, and coordination of clinical services to improve access to sexual and reproductive health services.
We encourage anyone interested in adapting We Are Here Now in their community to use the updated Native Stand 2.0 version, which has been updated to improve usability.
We also encourage the materials provided in the We Are Here Now toolkit for information on how to integrate tribally relevant family, cultural, and systems level components into their program to complement their adaptations to Native Stand 2.0.
Formal training is not required to implement the Native STAND curriculum. If you would like to request training on Native STAND, you can do so through our TA Request Form.
To view the May 2025 Healthy Native Youth Community of Practice spotlighting the We Are Here Now Toolkit which includes powerpoint presentation and supportive handouts, click here: https://hny.npaihb.org/resource/5-21-25-we-are-here-now-toolkit/
Designing the NE intervention was a collaborative process over 15 years between the Fort Peck Tribes and Montana State University. Using community-based participatory research methods and principles, adaptations of NE took 12 months to complete. There were many cultural aspects that were considered when developing and designing NE; they are detailed in this section.
Our mixed methods evaluation documented the facilitators and barriers to implementing a multilevel intervention with Fort Peck. Our evaluation identified several important facilitators that improved the acceptability of the trial, including:
Study participants reported a wide range of positive outcomes from the project:
This section details the evaluation methods used to assess NE outcomes and provides considerations for adapting an evaluation for a similar intervention and other public health programs.
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