An Interview with AAIP President Dr. Jim Thompson

TC: We know that the average American diet is the culprit in the epidemic of obesity we're experiencing now. I wonder if you think the diet of many Indians makes them especially susceptible to obesity since their bodies are even less used to some of the kinds of foods many of us eat.

JT: Historically, Indian people started getting fat when they started eating government commodities, and I think Indian people kind of developed a taste for that type of diet. They've not gotten the kind of education they need and the kind of public health pressure, if you will, to change that behavior. When I was in the Indian Health Service, nobody said "boo" about being fat. It just didn't happen. That was in the 1970s. And I don't think today there's enough attention paid to it; certainly there aren't any big programs. I think there's starting to be an interest in getting some programs going, but Indian people started eating this unhealthy diet a long time ago, and nobody's told them to stop it, to be blunt. Nor has anyone designed programs that give them alternatives. Almost all minority populations have an obesity problem.

TC: Are there some things you’d like to do during the term of your AAIP presidency to educate people about disease prevention or management?

JT: Well, in fact we’re doing a lot of that already. We do have a large diabetes program, and that's been a very good program. We just did an informational video on AIDS, "Phillip’s Story", and there are a couple of other instances where we're just starting. We just got a grant do some work on SIDS [Sudden Infant Death Syndrome], and in the past we've done some things with other diseases. AAIP has grown so much over the last few years and we have a number of programs, so we have to be careful about just loading more programs into the mix. But I certainly would like to see us get into more programs like the diabetes program where we’re helping people understand what they should be eating and not eating. There is some interest in obesity. And I have a lot of personal interest in dealing with some of the mental disorders like depression and anxiety, because I think a lot of negative behavior especially among youth is often due to being depressed. In fact, at the next annual meeting in Tulsa we will be focusing on adolescents because there's where I think a lot of really negative behavior for Indian people starts. During my term I'd like to have the board really assess our programs and what direction we want to go in the future. We started that process in the fall at our meeting in Minneapolis, trying to look at the overall programs of the association, and I suspect that some new initiatives will come out of that. It's hard to predict which ones because it depends not only on what you're interested in, but what you can get funded.