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Juneau residents are expressing concerns about reducing or eliminating several programs that lose money at Bartlett Regional Hospital, including a 16-bed residential and outpatient substance abuse treatment facility that is projected to lose $800,000 next year. The hospital’s financial condition is unhealthy, officials said at a public forum June 4, while it faces growing competition from the nonprofit SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. About 25 people in-person and 35 online attended the first of two public forums scheduled by h...
A minimum wage of $25 an hour for direct-hire employees is being implemented by the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, the Native-run health care organization announced Feb. 7. The change applies to about 85% of SEARHC’s total workforce and will result in pay increases for about 16% of the organization’s employees, said Kathryn Sweyer, a SEARHC spokesperson, in an interview Feb. 8. She said various assistant positions, clerks, technicians and care attendants are among the employees who were paid less than $25 an hour. Contractor emp...
The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium is offering people the chance to win Alaska Airlines miles for responding to a community health needs assessment survey. The survey is aimed at gathering information about the overall well-being of communities and individuals across Southeast. “Share your thoughts with us on daily living, nutrition, exercise habits and health care access,” the regional health care provider said in its Facebook postings. “The Community Wellness Health Needs Assessment was developed to evaluate the health statu...
Mike Hoyt, who started work as the school district's activities director on Sept. 22, is no stranger to Wrangell. His mother, Diane Comer, graduated high school here. His father, Mike Hoyt, was born in Wrangell. And his grandmother, Ethel Lund, who died last year, grew up in town and helped found the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. Though Hoyt grew up elsewhere, "I've been here pretty frequently throughout my life." He moved to Wrangell a couple of months ago. In addition to taking...
Alaska Natives in certain rural areas of the state have the nation’s highest death rates from suicide and domestic violence and some of the highest rates of accidental deaths, while Asians and Latinos in the state have some of the nation’s lowest rates for deaths from a wide variety of conditions like heart disease and respiratory disorders, according to a new study. The study, published Thursday, Aug. 3, in The Lancet, one of the world’s oldest medical journals, is a sweeping review of health disparities across the nation, as shown in vario...
Busy lifestyles, reluctance and just old-fashion stubbornness can sometimes get in the way of addressing health care needs. The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium has the remedy for all the excuses. From 7 a.m. to noon on Saturday at the Nolan Center, SEARHC will hold its first health fair since 2019. The free event will provide information and services on everything from cancer prevention to lab services. There will even be drawings and prizes, including 50,000 Alaska Airlines miles and a children’s bicycle giveaway. “Sometimes it...
Alaska Natives continued to have the world’s highest rates of colorectal cancer as of 2018, and case rates failed to decline significantly for the two decades leading up to that year, according to a newly published study. The study, by experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, compared colorectal cancer rates among Alaska Natives with those of other populations in Alaska, the Lower 48 and other parts of the world. The 2018 colorectal cancer rate for Alaska Natives was 61.9 per 10...
Communities without 70,000-seat stadiums don’t often get visits from professional athletes, but later this month Wrangell will become an exception to the rule. Players from Team Hollywood celebrity streetball will visit Feb. 21 to share inspirational messages — and play sports — with students and community members through Wrangell Cooperative Association (WCA) funding. Tribal Administrator Esther Aaltséen Reese of the WCA invited the organization to town after a conversation with Tanana Chiefs Conference member Donald Charlie at the Associ...
Christine Jenkins passed away peacefully surrounded by her family on January 4, 2023, at the age of 94. She was a lifelong Wrangell resident and a much-loved and respected member of the Wrangell community. Cecelia Christine Feller was born October 12, 1928, in Wrangell to Otto and Susie (Cooday) Feller. She was the youngest of seven children. She was Tlingit Raven/Frog, Kiks.a'di of the Sun House in Wrangell and was a tribal citizen of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. Christine...
Health care services for Native Americans and Alaska Natives will be bolstered by a provision included in the government spending bill approved by Congress in the final hours of the 2022 session. The measure provides more certainty for a federal agency that delivers health care to more than 2.5 million people. A coalition of lawmakers from Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, California, Alaska and elsewhere fought to include advance appropriations for the Indian Health Service in the bill, marking a first for the chronically underfunded agency as a...
Though the combined impacts of COVID-19, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza have burdened medical facilities nationwide, seasonal flu cases appear to be plateauing in Alaska, though activity remains high. Wrangell has largely managed to avoid the effects of the “tripledemic” predicted by White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha. Cases in Alaska started to rise steadily in October and hit pre-pandemic peaks in late November — months before the usual February peak for flu. As of the Dec. 24, the flu activity “is s...
Wrangell's Davis Dow of the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium received the Rising Star Award at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium's Behavioral Health Aide forum last month. The award is given to a health aide who delivers exceptional client care and improves the behavioral health care delivery system in their community. Dow was honored for his collaboration with the Wrangell School District and for helping meet the needs of homeless community members. His efforts allowed...
The borough assembly is moving toward lowering the asking price for the former Wrangell hospital by almost half and hiring a real estate agent to sell the property. The assembly at its Nov. 22 meeting accepted an ordinance to reduce the asking price and set a public hearing on the ordinance for Dec. 20, at which time members could vote on the proposal. The Bennet Street lot has been vacant since the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium’s new medical center opened in February 2021. The borough has been looking actively – and unsuccessfull...
Ethel Aanwoogex' Lund, a pioneer of tribal health care, died in the early morning last Friday at the age of 91. She was instrumental in improving the quality of care for Alaska Native people and received national recognition for her contributions. Lund was born in Wrangell in 1931, where she witnessed firsthand the challenges that rural and Native Alaskans faced when trying to access health care. After tuberculosis devastated her community - and put her in the hospital for two and a half years...
Last Thursday afternoon was dark and drizzly, but the children and parents of the I Toowú Klatseen running program braved the inauspicious weather to complete a 5K, demonstrating the program’s values of physical and spiritual strength. I Toowú Klatseen, which translates to “strengthen your spirit,” is a 10-week afterschool running program that teaches children in the third to fifth grades about Tlingit values. The curriculum uses traditional stories, Tlingit language lessons and culturally relevant games to instill respect for land and communit...
From stained glass designers to wood carvers, Wrangell is home to a thriving creative community. But one of the most popular artists in town, whose work appears all over Front Street, is also one of the most anonymous. If you've ever gone on a Stikine Inn coffee run, eaten pizza at Nic's Place or looked up the weekend movie selection on the Nolan Center website, you've seen the artwork of printmaker and graphic designer Grace Wintermyer. When she isn't working at outdoor retailer 56° North or...
Whether it’s a pesky case of the winter blues or a more serious health condition, Brooke Reynolds of the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium has words of encouragement for community members who are starting to feel the effects of the changing seasons. The lengthening hours of darkness “affect us all, some of us more than others,” said Reynolds, who is the clinical supervisor at Wrangell Behavioral Health. Even otherwise-healthy people can have “down days,” especially during the winter months. She recommends that her clients stay phys...
The entire Wrangell family — consisting of parents, kids, siblings, elders, community members and more — is invited to the Family Resilience Fair at the Nolan Center next month. BRAVE, a domestic violence prevention organization whose name stands for Building Respect And Valuing Everyone, is hosting the fifth-annual fair on Nov. 19 from 2 to 4 p.m. The event will feature prizes, family-centric games and informative booths from social service organizations in the area. The upcoming fair is “a way for … agencies to connect with the communi...
Wrangell’s Native community is critical of last month’s chamber-sponsored economic forum for its lack of tribal presentations on the agenda and the offensive comment of a speaker. The chamber of commerce organized the five-hour session to spark a discussion about Wrangell’s economic future and create a space for business leaders to share their perspectives. However, key players in Wrangell’s economic landscape — particularly representatives of the tribal government — were not offered the opportunity to present. Esther Aaltséen Reese, triba...
Despite a global COVID-19 pandemic the past two and a half years, influenza — the flu — is still among us. To that end, the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium will hold a flu clinic from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Oct. 22 at the Wrangell Medical Center SEARHC is asking people to call and schedule a time slot to reduce wait time, however walk-ins are still welcome. The clinic was originally scheduled for Oct. 8 but was rescheduled due to a delay in the shipment of vaccines. Between 2010 and 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Pre...
Alex Angerman, CARES Act coordinator for the Wrangell Cooperative Association, is running for borough assembly to improve community outreach and foster youth engagement in municipal government. "The community oftentimes feels like they aren't heard," she said, and she hopes to use her assembly seat to provide a voice for the rising generation. She believes that the borough should increase its social media presence to better connect with the community, and has been actively fielding questions...
The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium’s expansion of its long-term care unit at the Wrangell Medical Center remains on target for construction completion at the end of 2022. In June, SEARHC broke ground on an 1,800-square-foot addition to increase the unit’s capacity by four beds. According to Lyndsey Schaefer, director of marketing and communications at SEARHC, the additional beds will be available for use in early 2023. Spots in the 14-bed long-term care unit are “hard to come by,” said Schaefer. Once construction ends and the new...
The SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium will switch its food service contractor for the Wrangell Medical Center from NANA Management Services (NMS) to Aramark Corp. The switch in providers, according to SEARHC marketing and communications director Lyndsey Schaefer, was a “business decision.” SEARHC will officially transition from NMS to Aramark on Oct. 1. All 20 current NMS employees in Wrangell will be offered jobs with Aramark, Schaefer said last week. NMS is an Alaska-based, Native-owned company that provides food and security ser...
The Skagway Borough Assembly has directed the borough manager to pursue negotiations for the SouthEast Alaska Regional Health Consortium to take over management of the community health clinic and lease the municipally owned building. In the meantime, the Dahl Memorial Clinic, which costs the municipality about $1 million per year to operate, will get a temporary executive director at the price of about $150,000 for three months through a company that also sells training and restructuring services to health centers. The company has prepared a...
Looking to ensure that all property is taxed fairly and equitably, the borough is considering a reassessment of all residential and commercial properties for next year’s tax bills. The goal is for assessments to be consistent and “fair and equitable for everyone,” Borough Manager Jeff Good said last week. It’s not about raising taxes, it’s to ensure that similar properties are assessed accordingly, he said. Generally, the borough’s property assessor — a contractor from out of town — reviews the value assigned to about a third of the property...
