ANTHC was created in December 1997 to manage statewide health services for Alaska Native people. All Alaska Natives, through their tribal governments and through their regional nonprofit organizations, own the Consortium. We employ, for the better health of our service population, approximately 2,000 people and operate under a half-billion dollar operating budget.

Timeline

1997
• IHS opens a the new Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage
• ANTHC incorporates as a not-for-profit organization

1998
• Contract with Indian Health Service transfers statewide services to ANTHC and expands to include the Division of Environmental Health and Engineering

1999
• ANTHC and Southcentral Foundation assume joint management of ANMC
• ANTHC becomes largest tribal self-governance organization in the U.S.
• ANMC earns certification as Alaska’s only Level II Trauma Center
• AFHCAN telehealth project launches

2002
• ANTHC begins training village-based Dental Health Aide Therapists
• The Regional Utility Cooperative (later, the Alaska Rural Utility Collaborative) is created to reduce outages, improve water quality, lower costs and provide training

2003
• ANMC achieves prestigious Magnet® status for nursing excellence, an honor bestowed to only five percent of U.S. hospitals

2006
• ANTHC establishes tobacco-free campus

2007
• ANTHC completes groundbreaking study showing children in communities with in-home water service have far fewer respiratory diseases and skin infections
• ANTHC launches Healthy Alaska Natives Foundation

2008
• ANTHC begins work on the Alaska e-Health Network, an electronic health records system

2009
• American Nurses Credentialing Center redesignates ANMC with Magnet® status
• ANMC receives full re-accreditation from the Joint Commission
• ANTHC establishes Center for Climate and Health

2010
• ANMC’s trauma center, the only Level II trauma center in the state, retains verification.
• ANTHC launches www.iknowmine.org to help teens make healthy choices
• The journal Vaccine publishes a paper on the near-eradication of hepatitis A in Alaska, and ANTHC’s role in seeing Alaska Natives’ rates of the disease go from among the worst to the best in the U.S.