Religious Contacts, Student Volunteers Find Themselves in Midst of Mental Health Crisis

(Illustration/Je’Leah Laurenceau)
From partner Grady Newsource

A 12-year-old killed herself at a Spokane hospital that recently closed its youth psychiatric unit

Asha Joseph spoke at her 12-year-old sister's funeral on Tuesday. Sarah Niyimbona had been receiving psychiatric treatment at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center intermittently for eight months when she died by suicide at the hospital. Erick Doxey/InvestigateWest

Language lives on for tribes in Oklahoma despite determined erasure attempts

Martie Woothtakewahbitty teaches her students how to speak the Comanche language in a classroom at the Life Ready Center in Lawton on September 26, 2024.
Abigail Siatkowski
/KOSU

Dozens of people died in Arizona sober living homes as state officials fumbled Medicaid fraud response

Anders Hustito sits at his house in Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico. His son, 43-year-old Jeffrey Hustito, died at a sober living home in Glendale, Arizona, in 2022. © Adriana Zehbrauskas, special to ProPublica
Anders Hustito sits at his house in Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico. His son, 43-year-old Jeffrey Hustito, died at a sober living home in Glendale, Arizona, in 2022. © Adriana Zehbrauskas, special to ProPublica

Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting by Hannah Bassett and Mary Hudetz, January 27, 2025: Arizona officials acknowledged that a fraud scheme targeting Indigenous people with addictions cost taxpayers $2.5 billion. But they haven’t accounted publicly for the number of deaths tied to the scheme.

At least 40 Native American residents of sober living homes and treatment facilities in the Phoenix area died as state Medicaid officials struggled to respond to a massive fraud scheme that targeted Indigenous people with addictions.

The deaths, almost all from drug and alcohol use, span from the spring of 2022 to the summer of 2024, according to a review of records from the Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner. Over half died as officials ignored calls to address lax oversight later shown to have contributed to thousands of patients being recruited into sham treatment programs.

Patients continued to die even after Arizona officials in May 2023 announced a sweeping investigation of hundreds of facilities. By then, the fraud was so widespread that officials spent the next year seeking to halt Medicaid reimbursements to behavioral health businesses accused of wrongdoing.

The state’s Medicaid agency, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, acknowledged the fraud cost taxpayers as much as $2.5 billion. But it has not accounted publicly for the number of deaths tied to the scheme.

Many of the deaths in sober living homes reviewed by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica happened as officials — in at least five instances across Republican and Democratic administrations — failed to act on evidence that rampant fraud was imperiling Native Americans whose care was paid for by the agency, according to court documents, agency records and interviews.

A class-action lawsuit filed last month by families who allege the state’s inaction harmed or killed loved ones seeking addiction treatment names three people who died outside of sober living homes or treatment programs. Their deaths are not among the 40 fatalities tied directly to the facilities in medical examiner records.

Read more from the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.