‘Keeps us going’: Crow nonprofit gets $180K grant for health equity

Nora Mabie

In January 1984, Alma McCormick gave birth to twins — a boy and a girl.

But when the children turned 1, McCormick’s daughter, Camie, was diagnosed with a rare childhood cancer. Camie and her family made 10 trips to Denver for her chemotherapy treatments, and she lived almost another year before dying in December 1985.

“That experience really filled my heart with passion,” McCormick said. “I had a passion and desire to develop something for my Crow people.”

McCormick’s passion paid off last month when her organization was awarded $180,000 to promote health equity.

Messengers for Health forms

A few years after hear daughter’s death, McCormick met with several other Crow women and a faculty member at Montana State University who were invested in health equity. Initially, the group focused on cervical cancer, which had been affecting Crow women, and as McCormick said, is usually preventable.

People are also reading…

“We sat at a restaurant here in Hardin, and it was up to us to brainstorm just how this would work,” she recalled. “We knew it would really take a Crow woman to talk to other Crow women to get preventive

View Source