This site brings together my research on Indian health policy and financing, with a particular focus on how federal policy, data, and financing systems shape the resources available for Indian health care.
Indian health financing isn’t a subject most people spend a career on. I did — and this site is where that work lives now that I’m retired. It’s not a stack of papers to wade through; it’s a map of how the funding, the policy, data, and people connect, built from decades of seeing it up close.
I worked in Indian health as a Tribal health program administrator, a Tribal health director for the Port Gamble S’Klallam, Skokomish, and Squaxin Island Tribes. I worked for two leading Indian health organizations: in executive leadership and policy at the Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board and as the Director of National Indian Health Board’s 2020 to 2023 Data Project.
Explore the Site
Below is a map of how that work fits together — the funding streams, the policy shifts, and the papers that trace them.
The papers in this archive represent different parts of a continuing examination of how Indian health care is financed, delivered, measured, and improved. The Indian Health Finance Research Map provides a framework for understanding the major areas of this research, while the Indian Health Finance Research Timeline shows how the work developed over four decades. No claim is made that the author participated in the 1970s as career in health began in the 1980s and in 1995 in Indian Health.
The Research Over Time
This timeline shows the development of the research across more than four decades. The work evolved from participation in national policy and technical advisory efforts into a broader body of research examining Indian health financing, data, coverage, and health system performance.
The early work established a foundation in federal and Tribal health policy. Later research increasingly focused on Medicaid, Medicare, enrollment, data, and financing relationships — bringing together the policy experience and data work that inform the research presented on this site.
Edward J. Fox, PhD 
