Missouri Breaks Industries Research
Missouri Breaks Industries Research is a tribally based research organization. We are not a university. We are not a federal agency. We are community members — from Cheyenne River, Pine Ridge, and Spirit Lake — and we have been doing this work since 1995 because outside researchers don't know us like we know ourselves.
Most people know us as the Northern Plains field center for the Strong Heart Study. That's where we started, and it's still a major part of what we do. The trust and infrastructure we built through the Strong Heart Study became the foundation for something larger: a research organization that works across every area of community health.
We hire locally. We train locally. When someone joins our team, we build researchers, not temporary data collectors. We listen to our community first: we always have, and we always will.
We've been here for three decades helping our community — and we'll be here for what comes next.
2 — The Strong Heart Study
In 1989, nobody in federal health agencies knew why American Indians were dying from heart disease at rates that were higher than other populations. The problem was: there was no data.
The Strong Heart Study was the direct response. It was the first large-scale study of cardiovascular health in American Indian communities. The Aberdeen Area Tribal Chairmen's Health Board was the original grantee for the Northern Plains center. Missouri Breaks was founded in 1995 to take over the Dakota field center in Phase II — and has run it ever since, serving three Tribal nations for three decades.
Today, Strong Heart is the longest-running and most comprehensive study of cardiovascular health in American Indian communities ever conducted. Here's what came out of it:
This is what happens when research stays in the community long enough to matter.
3 — What Else We Do
The relationships and infrastructure that Strong Heart built over decades opened the door for work that touches every part of community health. Missouri Breaks has run over a hundred projects across eleven research areas which expand beyond the original focus on heart disease.
We work with partners like Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Harvard, the CDC, NIH, and Tribal health boards. But the work happens here, run by people from here. That's the model.
When COVID hit, we ran a vaccine clinical trial and collected information about infection rates and risk for long-COVID as part of a larger, unprecedented rapid public health response. When arsenic showed up in our community water, we partnered with Johns Hopkins to study ways to reduce these exposures. When families were noticing more asthma in kids, we brought education programs door to door. When opioids started harming our most vulnerable community members, we built research and response programs to improve pain and mental health.
None of that happens without the decades of trust that Missouri Breaks has built with our communities. This work is our own, driven by what our communities need most.
4 — Who This Serves
No single doctor, clinic, or hospital can answer questions like: Why does heart disease affect our communities differently? That takes data from thousands of people tracked over decades. And it takes trust.
We know trust is earned, not assumed. We know the history.
The federal health system sterilized 25,000 Native women without consent in the 1960s and 70s. Boarding schools took children and some never came home. When government agencies said "trust us, this is for your benefit," the result was harm. That's not ancient history. People in this room remember.
So when we say this research serves the community, we understand why that gets scrutinized. It should be scrutinized. That's what Tribal oversight is for.
Here's what this research looks like when it is done right:
It took 40 years from the first evidence on smoking before lung cancer rates meaningfully dropped. Change can be slow. But without the evidence, we don't know what to change.
5 — How It Works
Before "community-based participatory research" was a term in a textbook, before the CARE (Collective, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics) principles were published, before data sovereignty became a conference topic, Missouri Breaks was already operating on the understanding that research in Indian Country either serves the community or it doesn't belong here.
In 2009, the NIH told the Strong Heart Study that open data sharing was now required for all federally funded projects. The SHS investigators had been meeting with NIH about this policy — and refused to budge. The data, they believed, belonged to the Tribal partners. Not to NIH. Not to a public repository.
NIH finally said: if you can get a letter from one Tribal nation stating they oppose open data sharing, we'll honor it for all SHS data.
Missouri Breaks went directly to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe — to the Health Committee and Tribal Council. Not because we had to negotiate or convince anyone. Because the relationship was already there. It had been there for twenty years.
The Tribal Council passed Resolution No. 1-2009-CR — unanimously. Fifteen yes, zero no, zero abstaining. It declared that all DNA information collected on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation belongs to the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, and may not be released to any individual, agency, or organization without specific Tribal authorization. It further declared that the DNA of the people and their ancestors belongs to the Tribe and their respective families.
The resolution also stated what the Tribe already knew: that the trust between the SHS and the Tribes had been established carefully over time, and could not automatically be transferred to investigators who had no such relationship with the community.
NIH honored that resolution — not just for Cheyenne River, but for all SHS Tribes.
That's what decades of doing this right looks like when it counts.
We know that new people come to the table who weren't here when this work started. That's a good thing — fresh eyes keep us accountable, and moving forward. Our job is to make sure our communities are not just represented, but an active participant at all levels of the research process. But you are the voices of our community. We want to hear from you.