A Navajo-led study has found the COVID-19 pandemic cut people off from both hospital care and traditional healing across the Navajo Nation.
The Navajo Nation — the largest Indigenous nation in the United States — spans parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah and is home to the Diné people.
Published this year, the research documents how Diné adults tried to access healthcare during the pandemic, from clinics and hospitals to traditional medicine, and the strain the period placed on mental wellbeing.
Many participants said they delayed or avoided medical care altogether, citing fear of infection, long travel distances and reduced clinic services. At the same time, public health restrictions and illness disrupted access to traditional healing, limiting the ability of healers, families and communities to gather safely.
Respondents reported heightened stress, grief and anxiety, particularly among people already living with chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and respiratory illness. The study notes these conditions — shaped by decades of underinvestment — left many more vulnerable to both COVID-19 and its wider impacts.
Rather than framing these outcomes as matters of individual choice, the researchers point to structural barriers shaping health on the Navajo Nation. Overcrowded housing, long distances to healthcare facilities, unreliable transport and gaps in basic infrastructure — including limited access to running water in some communities — made it harder to manage illness and maintain care.
Earlier studies found the Navajo Nation recorded disproportionately high infection and death rates in the early stages of the pandemic, linked to poverty and chronic underfunding of the Indian Health Service. While much of that research focused on mortality, this study shifts attention to lived experience, centring Navajo voices and the everyday decisions made under pressure.
The authors say the findings underline the need for sustained investment in infrastructure and Indigenous-led health approaches, warning that without systemic change, the same failures will resurface in future health emergencies.
