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California’s Central Valley is arguably the most productive agricultural region in the world. Despite making up only 1% of all farmland in the United States, it produces 250 different crops that make up a quarter of all food consumed in the U.S., including close to half of all fruit, nuts, and table foods. The map included below shows the variety and intensity of this kind of cultivation. This level of agricultural production has been made possible by the dominance of industrial agriculture interests at all levels of government, resulting in one of the most physically altered landscapes in the world. These alterations focused in large part on water, the biggest limiting factor for industrial agriculture in a region technically classified as a desert. Over the course of the 20th century, the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi–Tulare Lake–was drained to make more land available, the Central Valley Project and State Water Project built thousands of miles of canals and tens of dams to control the supply of water for irrigation, and massive groundwater aquifers were pumped nearly dry during drought years. These transformations were accomplished through the utilization of rhetoric that emphasizes the centrality of the farmer identity to the American political imaginary (despite the massive distance between Californian industrial agriculture and the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal) and the unique importance of providing the nation’s food. This kind of exceptionalism has characterized agriculture across the United States since its inception and has repeatedly produced other forms of social injustice (e.g., the exclusion of agricultural laborers from U.S. labor protections) that compound the hazardous effects of its environmental injustices.

Source

Vo, Katie, Taranjot Bhari and Margaret Tebbe. 2023. Industrial Agriculture in California's Central Valley. In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

California’s Central Valley is arguably the most productive agricultural region in the world. Despite making up only 1% of all farmland in the United States, it produces 250 different crops that make up a quarter of all food consumed in the U.S., including close to half of all fruit, nuts, and table foods. The map included below shows the variety and intensity of this kind of cultivation. This level of agricultural production has been made possible by the dominance of industrial agriculture interests at all levels of government, resulting in one of the most physically altered landscapes in the world. These alterations focused in large part on water, the biggest limiting factor for industrial agriculture in a region technically classified as a desert. Over the course of the 20th century, the largest body of freshwater west of the Mississippi–Tulare Lake–was drained to make more land available, the Central Valley Project and State Water Project built thousands of miles of canals and tens of dams to control the supply of water for irrigation, and massive groundwater aquifers were pumped nearly dry during drought years. These transformations were accomplished through the utilization of rhetoric that emphasizes the centrality of the farmer identity to the American political imaginary (despite the massive distance between Californian industrial agriculture and the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal) and the unique importance of providing the nation’s food. This kind of exceptionalism has characterized agriculture across the United States since its inception and has repeatedly produced other forms of social injustice (e.g., the exclusion of agricultural laborers from U.S. labor protections) that compound the hazardous effects of its environmental injustices.

Vo, Katie, Taranjot Bhari and Margaret Tebbe. 2023. "Industrial Agriculture in California's Central Valley." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Quoted from the front page of the website

"Our Mission ... to raise the physical, mental, social, and spiritual health of American Indians and Alaska Natives to the highest level.

Our Goal ... to assure that comprehensive, culturally acceptable personal and public health services are available and accessible to American Indian and Alaska Native people."

The membership consists of American natives who would like to receive the benefits of this organization. To be eligible to be a member you must be "an Indian and/or Alaskan Native" evidenced by several factors including being a part of a tribe, living on reservation land, or living in the household of a native. The employees consist of federal healthcare professionals commissioned by the United States Public Health Service and Civil Service federal employees.

Representatives of the Indian Health Service have made numerous congressional testimonies and numerous pieces of legislation have been passes to support the IHS, however, it does not appear that any relate to emergency response or disaster.

The IHS mainly focuses on disaster prevention and preparedness with initiatives such as teaching children about illness prevention, teaching about safe drinking water and food safety, preventing the spread of disease, and preventing injuries. They also have a number of resources available to their members to connect with healthcare professionals. This seems to be a community awareness type approach that prevents the spread of disease by teaching the community. It resembles that of many healthcare systems and does not seem to suggest problems with other approaches.

Legislation including the Indian Healthcare Improvement Act and the Snyder Act are the bases on which the IHS was founded. The passing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care act by President Obama is the cornerstone of the IHS, however no single event seems to shape the agency's way of approaching health.

The IHS is funded by Congress after being reviewed by The House, Senate, and Congressional committees annually. A budget is formulated by a division within the IHS for approval each year. This means that their way of thinking about disaster and health must be approved by Congress, since they are a Federal agency.

I could not find any data or reports on their website that have been collected to support their approach to healthcare other than the legislation previously mentioned.

The organization has done research and generated fact sheets on statistics like injuries, behavior health, and environmental safety.