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FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a science-based, regulatory, and consumer protection agency. Consumers rely on the FDA to ensure the safety of products in the marketplace. The Agency's workforce is multi-cultural and multilingual and efforts focus on improving the representation of American Indians and Alaska Natives in the FDA workforce, and enhancing public participation opportunities. The FDA has planned and initiated several projects to forge links with American Indians and Alaska Natives, to provide education on FDA issues and policies, to foster adoption of their ideas and agendas into the realm of the FDA's policy making, and to plan and implement the Agency's overall public participation and outreach initiatives. To promote and increase access, diversity, and active participation in the planning and implementation in all education and education-related programs and services directed to American Indians and Alaska Natives toward a strategic plan to improve Indian education beyond the year 2000; The FDA is working to intensify recruitment of American Indians and Alaska Natives as Consumer Representatives on FDA Advisory Committees, and to increase participation in Agency decision making. The FDA consults with the Association of American Indian Physicians to recruit candidates for advisory committees; To support ongoing Departmental initiatives and to create alternative pipelines for trained American Indians and Alaska Natives in medical, scientific, and health related professions; The FDA conducts recruitment and outreach efforts to American Indians and Alaska Native populations through programs such as the Cooperative Education Program (CO-OP), Commissioned Officer Student Training and Extern Program (COSTEP), and the summer employment program; The FDA plans to design and implement seminars to explain how to effectively interact with the Agency through the advisory committee process, consumer representation, and administrative rule-making procedures; The FDA has increased outreach to American Indians and Alaska Natives through participation in a variety of school-based programs, annual conferences and exhibitions to expand outreach networks. These activities include interactions with the National Congress of American Indians; Oklahoma's American Indian Page 35