Our Story

Our Purpose

Healthy mind, body and spirit for generations of our American Indian Community

Quality healthcare requires quality relationships. Integrating our services and focusing on the relationship between the client, their family and those who provide them care will serve to create long term relationships. It is in these long-term relationships that trust develops, communication opens, knowledge grows and healing takes place.

Quality healthcare also requires a quality working environment. We commit ourselves to creating healthy working conditions that support a sense of family within the organization and allow our staff to provide quality care. Everyone at UIHS accepts the responsibility for fostering an organizational culture that promotes teamwork and encourages us to care for ourselves and each other.

Our Guiding Principles

Traditionally Driven

Cultural values and traditions guide the planning and implementation of services.

Client-Centered

Care is provided in a way that works best for our clients.

Client Empowerment

Clients and their families are empowered to become active participants in their care.

Accessible

Access to care is optimized and waiting time minimized.

Communication

Communication is respectful, direct and open, allowing mutual decision making between clients, staff, sites, management and the Board of Directors.

Teamwork

We plan and act as an integrated team to care for our clients and community.

Population-Based

The community’s greatest needs direct what services we provide and how we provide them.

Prevention-Focused

Prevention, education and health promotion is our focus in the attainment of wellness.

American Indian Staff Development

We commit ourselves to recruiting, training and retaining American Indian Staff.

Accountable

We hold ourselves and each other accountable for supporting the vision and mission, for following through and for correcting problems as they arise.

Efficient

We efficiently manage our resources, energy and time.

Core Philosophies

Ko’lha koom’ ma

(Yurok – working together)

We honor the dignity of every person. We value working together with the individual, the family and the community. By sharing our strengths and resources we bring wellness to ourselves, our community and our world.

May gay tolh kway

(Yurok – a healing place)

We strive to provide the best healthcare services in an environment that is welcoming, healing and nurturing for all. We hire qualified staff and commit ourselves to recruiting American Indians at all levels. We value every staff member and support the development of each employee’s potential while optimizing their skills and contributions.

Ghes na’ dvn

(Tolowa – well place)

We value caring for the whole person. We focus our resources on the promotion of health and prevention of illness. We recognize that social environmental, cultural, spiritual and economic wellness is vital for the overall health of our community and organization; we support and promote actions that bring these elements into balance.

Our History

The history of the United Indian Health Services began in 1968. It was a time when Native activism coincided with the nation-wide Civil Rights Movement and the Office of Economic Opportunity programs. Together these factors helped create a new era of self-determination for Indian peoples.

In California, where health services were so lacking, Indian groups formed their own health organizations. Each maintained its separate programs but together they started the California Rural Indian Health Board Inc. (CRIHB), an organization which continues providing its members with a variety of quality improvement and advocacy services. Sheer determination, hard work and financial sacrifice paid off when UIHS became an official non-profit organization, ready to serve people in 1970.

UIHS started with community outreach services. The first services provided on site were dental services. UIHS continued to expand it’s services into nearly every large town within Humboldt County, as well as servicing tribal members from every Rancheria and Reservation in the areas of Humboldt and Del Norte Counties. The use of UIHS mobile services allowed the clinic to provide services to tribal members who still lived in areas that had no electricity or telephones.

Over the next twenty years UIHS outgrew four sites, started several satellite clinics, and went from offering basic visiting community health representative’s, dental and medical services to a thoroughly modern, full spectrum health service agency. Along the way UIHS has increasingly realized it’s goal of incorporating traditional values and customs into daily activities.

Historical Timeline

1849

Indian Health Care transferred from the war department to the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)

1849

1850

Gold Rush