Jaime Begay, a student in the Northern Arizona University Master of Public Health, Indigenous Health track and a graduate research assistant with the Navajo Native American Research Center for Health partnership, recently won the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona’s 2021 ITCA Climate Resilience Essay Scholarship Contest based on an essay she wrote titled “Climate Change in Tribal Communities.”
“I would like to thank the professors in my graduate program,” Begay said. “The classes I have taken thus far are really what helped me to refine my essay and to decide the topics I discussed.”
Begay’s essay examined how climate change disproportionately affects tribal communities by creating a domino effect of varying environmental crisis, and it outlined climate change concerns in her community of Tuba City, Arizona. Begay also received the Louis H. and Betty J. Quayle Scholarship in April.