Project HOPE, New York Life Foundation Partnering for Navajo Nation

Home to more than 500 tribes and 300 reservations, the vast Navajo Nation spans across Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Yet there are just six hospitals, seven health centers, and 15 health stations serving the entire territory — with fewer than 20 ICU beds for the whole population of 300,000.

It’s an inequity that doesn’t just put Navajo Nation’s residents at a disadvantage; it’s proven devastating during the COVID-19 pandemic.

One-quarter of all households in Navajo Nation lack electricity, and a third don’t have running water. Half of Navajo Nation’s entire population lives in multigenerational households, which can make social distancing or isolating to stop the spread of the disease impossible.

Taken together, Navajo Nation has experienced an overwhelming burden of COVID-19 cases, with more than 1 in 10 people having contracted the disease. At the height of the pandemic, Native Americans were 3.5 times more likely to contract COVID-19 and dying at nearly twice the rate as white Americans. Nearly 1,300 people in Navajo Nation have died in total, a number equal to 1.4 million deaths if extrapolated out to the entire U.S. population.

In partnership with Indian Health Services, Project HOPE has been supporting the indigenous communities of Navajo Nation with personal protective equipment and ongoing deployments of frontline medical volunteers to provide surge support in hospitals.

And thanks to generous support from the New York Life Foundation, that support has been able to continue through a devastating surge of winter cases and a critical inflection point in the fight against the disease.

“COVID-19 has highlighted and exacerbated longstanding systemic, health, and social inequities among racial and ethnic minority groups across the country, increasing their risk of getting sick and dying from the disease,” says Michael Burke, Chief Operating Officer of the New York Life Foundation. “The issue of health equity has been front and center in this pandemic with a disproportionate impact on marginalized communities like the Navajo Nation.”

With support from New York Life, Project HOPE has been able to deploy dozens of expert medical volunteers to reduce the burden on Navajo Nation’s health care workers, provide increased access to COVID-19 testing, and facilitate one of the most successful vaccination outreach efforts in the country, which included mobile vaccine clinics.

“Funding from New York Life allowed us to recruit, train, and deploy medical volunteers from across the United States to support the people of the Navajo Nation for months longer than we expected to,” says Harley Jones, Project HOPE’s Senior Manager of Domestic Emergency Response. “Despite a nationwide shortage of medical professionals, we were able to deploy more than 55 volunteers to work side-by-side with medical professionals in Navajo Nation and participate in one of the nation’s most successful vaccine outreach programs.”

As Navajo Nation moves into the next phase of the pandemic, Project HOPE volunteers are continuing to help distribute COVID-19 vaccines, ensuring everyone in Navajo Nation has access. As of May 2021, more than half of all adults in Navajo Nation had been vaccinated, nearly double the U.S. national rate — a major achievement for a location that just months ago had some of the country’s highest infection rates.

“This funding from New York Life came through at the most critical time for Navajo Nation and Project HOPE,” Jones says. “The winter saw the largest surge of COVID cases for the Nation, but by February they were making tremendous progress in distributing the vaccine. This funding allowed Project HOPE to continue to send volunteers in support of the vaccine effort. Volunteers continued to see patients in the hospitals and began deploying to vaccine clinics throughout the Nation to continue the momentum into the spring.”

Since June 2020, in partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Global Disaster Response, Project HOPE volunteers in Navajo Nation have deployed to Chinle, Arizona; Gallup, New Mexico; and Shiprock, New Mexico.

Those deployments are part of Project HOPE’s global COVID-19 response that has distributed more than 14 million pieces of personal protective equipment, provided training for over 98,000 health care workers and frontline personnel, and reached more than 150 countries.

“Both New York Life and Project HOPE are focused on transforming lives and uplifting communities,” Burke says. “Our efforts are centered on creating brighter futures; providing support in difficult times, including disasters; and supporting vulnerable communities. We are also aligned on the importance of supporting nonprofit partners who are embedded in communities so that funding is provided exactly where it is needed the most.”

Burke continued, “We hope that our support will help the Navajo Nation successfully overcome the COVID-19 pandemic and become more resilient to handle future health crises. We’re very proud to partner with Project HOPE on this initiative and their nationwide COVID-19 efforts.”

For more information on how Project HOPE is supporting Navajo Nation, including stories from our frontline volunteers, click here. To read more about Project HOPE’s global COVID-19 response, visit here.

“At Project HOPE, we are impressed and humbled by the opportunity to have served alongside the people of the Navajo Nation,” Jones says. “From the beginning of the pandemic, they collectively battled the virus and cared for one another without allowing politics or opinions get in the way of science. They wore masks and respected the guidance as a way to care for one another. They provided leadership to the youth of their Nation and took care of their elders and respected everyone. The support from New York Life allowed us to support them in their time of need.”