Siamit (pronounced say • mit) is a Health Equity Action Lab at the Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery. Founded in 2016 by partners at Maniilaq Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Massachusetts General Hospital, our mission is to advance a health equity agenda in rural Alaska by connecting academic medicine and community care.
Our programs reflect the traditional tripartite mission of teaching, research, and service in an academic-tribal health partnership context: We train the next generation of Indigenous health leaders through health pathways, fellowships, and continuing education. We conduct community-based research and tell stories about caregiving, public health, and the future of country medicine. Most importantly, we deliver world-class care in partnership with 12 communities across Northwest Alaska.
Teaching
At Harvard, we’re building a family of students and educators committed to a shared vision of responsive, equitable, and lasting community partnerships. We offer Alaska-based rotations for residents and fellows across a range of specialties, as well as a unique postgraduate fellowship for early-career American Indian and Alaska Native health workers. With Sinew, we make open-access CME, told like a story, for rural and tribal health workers. In Alaska, our academic and community faculty work together to foster a climate of kindness, curiosity, and clinical excellence at the second-most remote hospital in America.
Research
Our research program builds academic-community teams to map and address the social determinants of health in rural Alaska. Through a direct tribal governance model, we develop a shared research agenda, fund student projects, train community investigators, and carry out social medicine research in Northwest Alaska. For the 2022-2024 cycle, we are conducting research across three domains: reproductive health; climate, subsistence, and health; and mental health. While we occasionally publish in journals, our focus is on generating actionable knowledge for health system strengthening and communicating with the public through popular media.
Service
Our primary commitment is care delivery in Northwest Alaska. Siamit residents, fellows, and faculty support programs in social medicine, primary care, women’s health, psychiatry, addiction medicine, pediatrics, and emergency medicine in partnership with Maniilaq Social Medicine. We partner with community stakeholders to assess needs, develop priorities, write grants, design programs, and deliver services. Finally, we work to build more equitable and effective models for care delivery across rural and Native America through policy formulation and advocacy on regional, state, national, and global levels.