Fitzsimons will be Indian health hub
Denver Business Journal - by Paula Moore Business Journal Real Estate Editor
One of this country's most advanced American Indian health care facilities will be part of the massive new University of Colorado medical campus at the old Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora.
The facility will be among the new CU campus' first buildings, as well as one of its most significant, according to those involved with the project. The structure will be devoted to Indians' physical and mental well-being, using state-of-the art telecommunications equipment. It's also being designed by a local Indian-owned architecture firm partnering with an Indian consultant to make sure its ancient cultural components are authentic.
"This has not been done before," said Dr. Spero Manson, director of CU's native health programs and himself affiliated with the Pembina Chippewa tribe. "There's a heavy emphasis on reaching out and crossing barriers of geography and distance with this facility."
Over the next several years, the university will move its entire health care complex from Denver to a new, $3.5 billion campus on a little more than 200 acres at Fitzsimons.
The as-yet-unnamed, $10.3 million Indian health building will house the CU Health Sciences Center's American Indian and Alaskan Native, public psychiatry and telehealth/tele-education programs. The three-story, 46,000-square-foot structure will be located southeast of the main entrance to historic Building 500, Fitzsimons' centerpiece. Construction should begin by October of this year and be completed by the summer of 2002.
The trio of programs will be under the same roof because they're related. "This facility represents a marriage of our program activities with state-of-the-art telecommunications for disseminating programs and services," Manson said.
The remoteness of most American Indian reservations prompted the demand for so-called telehealth and tele-education, or using videoconferencing for medical education courses, diagnosis and even treatment. Indian ailments that can be dealt with long-distance range from military veterans' war trauma and emotional disturbance in children to disorders that plague elders such as diabetes and cancer. It can also be instrumental in drug- and alcohol-abuse prevention and treatment programs.
Part of the CU Native American division's research is determining how well its telehealth program works as well as whether it's worth the effort and cost. Most reservations, for example, lack adequate bandwidth to accommodate teleconferencing, so the university is trying to gain access via wireless, satellite and microwave means.
"You've got the university on one side of the digital divide and reservations on the other," said Ben Sherman, the Oglala Sioux president of Louisville-based Medicine Root Inc. and consultant to the CU Indian health division regarding its new facility. "Part of this project is wiring reservations and getting the funds to do that, especially for hospitals, clinics and those who provide home health care."
CU's Native American program already has telehealth operations, located in schools, on a couple of reservations -- South Dakota's Rosebud Sioux and Oglala Sioux communities -- and hopes to establish more. Reservations in Alaska, the Seattle area, southern Colorado and Wind River, Wyo., are scheduled to become involved.
Financing for the CU Indian facility alone has been tough to come by, but Manson says he's close to assembling it. Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, R-Colo. and a Northern Cheyenne, has helped find federal funds from a variety of sources for the project.
CU's Indian health program generally relies on the Indian Health Service, National Institutes of Health and Bureau of Indian Affairs for federal financial assistance. Tribal dollars come from the Cherokees of Oklahoma, Navajo and Cheyenne River Sioux.
The building's design is still in its infancy, according to Bob Outland, managing partner of the project's architecture firm, Denver-based MOA Architectural Partnership. Outland, who's affiliated with the Oklahoma Choctaw tribe, has principally designed office buildings in the Denver Technological Center area and at Interlocken on the Denver-Boulder Turnpike as well as industrial properties for nearly 20 years.
Overall, though, the limestone and brick structure will be circular in design, in keeping with Native Americans' belief in the "sacred hoop," or circular nature, of life. The entire building will be curved, and it will include a cone-shaped entry rotunda with a glass roof. "The top part of the rotunda will allow access to the sky, so we can mark the seasons with the entry of the sun into certain openings," said Sherman, who's advising Outland on the building's Indian aspects.
Native symbols will be inscribed over the windows, and lighted alcoves will feature American Indian art. Elaborate landscaping outside will include water features.
"This project is special to us because it's an Indian project," said Outland, who has known Sherman for many years. The architect also sits on the board of the Western American Indian Chamber of Commerce, which Sherman founded and still heads.
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