PORTLAND (AP) - Oregon Health & Science University beat out 27 other contenders as the site of a new research center that will focus on combating the high levels of drug and alcohol addiction among American Indians.

The "One Sky Center," funded by an initial three-year federal grant of $3 million, will collect information from drug- and alcohol-treatment programs nationwide that concentrate on American Indians.

Workers hope to figure out the most effective ways of preventing and treating substance abuse, said Dr. R. Dale Walker, the center's executive director and a psychiatrist at Oregon Health & Science University.

"I always felt there needed to be a way to coordinate all the health care work that goes on in the 560 tribes in this country," Walker said. "I think this project really is going to make a difference."

Lesley Hallick, OHSU's provost, announced the creation of the center at a university board of directors meeting Monday. The center's main goal will be finding out the best ways to stop native youth and adults from abusing drugs or alcohol, and of treating abuse.

Drug and alcohol abuse is a serious problem among American Indians. Alcoholism rates are six times higher among American Indians than the U.S. average, and drug abuse rates are at least four times higher, Walker said.

At the same time, American Indians are less likely than average to have access to health care and to receive quality mental health care, according to a U.S. surgeon general's report. Those factors combine with above-average rates of homelessness, poverty and incarceration to create a health crisis.

The result is that American Indians, taken together, have a lower life expectancy than the residents of any country in North or South America. Although that is not entirely due to drug and alcohol problems, Walker said, the "death rate from alcohol is certainly remarkably, disgustingly high."

History plays a role: European explorers and traders were "pretty heavy-drinking folks," Walker said, and introduced alcohol to many native tribes, creating problems hundreds of years ago. Higher rates of poverty, traumatic stress and other factors also probably contribute to high substance abuse, he said.

Open research questions include whether American Indians have a genetic predisposition to substance abuse, and why American Indian women have higher abuse rates than men - the only U.S. ethnic group in which that is the case.

The center will not directly research those questions at first, said Walker, who is Cherokee. Rather, it will act as a central clearinghouse for information, and put researchers involved in scores of separate projects in touch with each other.