About
Dr. Rachel Wilbur is descendant Tolowa and Chetco through her mother and is an assistant research professor in the Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine at Washington State University. She has an interdisciplinary educational background, having received her MPH in health behavior and health education and her PhD in biological anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, before completing a postdoctoral fellowship in Indigenous Community Wellbeing at Harvard Medical School. Her research is strengths-and-community based and involves working with Tribal Nations and urban Indigenous organizations to engage culture and cultural revitalization as opportunities to promote community wellbeing. Rachel’s work is driven by the belief that, as Indigenous Peoples, we have what we need to be well through our relationships, food ways, and connections to land and water. She is passionate about uplifting Indigenous students to thrive through mentorship, inclusion on projects, and connecting them with existing networks of brilliant Indigenous scholars to increase the diversity, wisdom, and strength of Indigenous health research today and in the future. Rachel lives with her family in Seattle, Washington and spends her free time in the mountains and on the water.
Rachel’s pilot project, a collaboration with the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation (UIATF) in Seattle, has two specific aims: 1) Through interviews with Traditional Medicine Practitioners, to identify strategies and protocols for preventing inappropriate use and dependency of substances within the context of ceremonial substance use, and 2) to increase knowledge of urban AI/AN substance use and overdose prevention and sense of agency in preventing misuse by integrating strengths-based, culturally tailored knowledge into UIATF’s existing overdose prevention workshop.