American Indian women are more likely to die from cardiovascular disease (CVD) than White or African American women. Inflammatory processes may underlie CVD disparities by gender and race and may be critical to understanding population‐specific drivers and potential buffers. Exposure to environmental air pollutants, especially particulate matter (PM), is known to be an important catalyst in CVD‐associated inflammation. Positive psychological states, associated with low levels of inflammatory gene expression, could serve to moderate the inflammatory response to environmental air pollutants and ultimately lead to better cardiovascular health outcomes. The aim of the ongoing community‐engaged and NIH‐funded study described in this study protocol is to address the racial and gender gaps in CVD mortality by investigating the contextually relevant and culturally important determinants of health among American Indian women. In this paper we describe the procedures used to examine the relationship between environmental air pollutant exposures (PM10‐2.5 and PM 2.5), psychological factors (e.g., depressive symptoms, posttraumatic stress symptoms, eudemonic well‐being, and positive emotions), and cardiovascular‐associated inflammation (hs‐CRP, IL‐6, Amyloid A, CBCs with differentials) in a sample of 150 women 18–50 years of age from the Lumbee Tribe in southeastern North Carolina. We describe lessons learned and strategies used in developing a community‐engaged approach to enhance recruitment of American Indian women in biomedical research. The empirical data and community infrastructure resulting from this study will be foundational in designing and testing future interventions to reduce CVD‐associated morbidity and mortality in American Indian women.

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In this cross-sectional study of 60 American Indian mother-child dyads from Southeastern North Carolina, we examined whether childhood asthma control was related to household-level factors, such as environmental tobacco smoke and family management behaviors. We also examined the relationships among family man-

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The Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES‐D) is widely used to assess depressive symptoms in the general population. It lacks validation for widespread use within the American Indian population, however. To address this gap, we explored and confirmed the factor structure of the CES‐D among a community sample of southeastern American Indian women. We analyzed data from a sample of 150 American Indian women ages 18–50 from a southeastern tribe who had complete responses on the CES‐D as part of a larger cross‐sectional, community‐engaged study. We performed exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to assess the measure's validity. We examined EFA models ranging from one to five factors, with the four‐factor structure yielding the best overall model fit (CFI = 1.00, TLI = 0.99, RMSEA = 0.03). Differences between the four‐factor EFA‐retained structure from our sample and Radloff's four‐factor structure emerged. Only the interpersonal factor was common to both factor structures. Our study findings confirm the validity of the original four‐factor structure of the CES‐D for younger adult American Indian women in the southeast. Contrasting findings with the EFA‐retained structure, however, provide a more nuanced interpretation of our results.