About
Dr. Evan White is an enrolled member of the Absentee Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. He belongs to the Shawnee Chapter of the Native American Church of Oklahoma and the Whiteoak ceremonial grounds. He is a Principal Investigator and Director of Native American Research and the Electroencephalography Core at the Laureate Institute for Brain Research. The focus of his work is employing clinical cultural neuroscience to improve mental health outcomes among American Indians. His pilot research project is titled “The intersection of Sociocultural Factors and Neurocognitive Function in Understanding Salutogenic effects related to Substance Use Outcomes in American Indian Peoples.” The goal of Dr. White’s research is to integrate clinical and cultural neuroscience to identify modifiable factors as candidate treatment targets for mental health intervention and prevention.
Dr. White’s CIRCLE pilot project aims to: 1) Identify links between neural markers of cognitive functioning (cognitive control and reward processing) with protective factors and/or substance use (SU) outcomes; 2) Identify neural markers of cultural stimuli responding and delineate the relationship with protective factors and SU outcomes; and 3) Hold a community-wide health-research dissemination event (e.g., present infographics, booklets) to directly inform the local AI community of recent and salient scientific findings.