Consumer/Patient Health, Education, News: Clinicians Communicating with Diverse Patient Populations

An intriguing (and somewhat elusive) reference question from a faculty member a few months ago was: how to measure whether clinicians in the U.S. are providing “culturally competent care” to their patients who may hail from diverse cultural backgrounds. This proved to be a challenging search. I recap some of the websites which were useful to this question below. Each of these sources are freely available, open access.

• Sponsored by the American Medical Association Foundation and the American Medical Association, Dr. Barry Weiss wrote a 67-page manual entitled “Health Literacy and Patient Safety: Help Patients Understand – Manual for Clinicians (2nd edition). The report is available online at: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/367/healthlitclinicians.pdf

• American Academy of Family Physicians provides a list, “Health Information in Multiple Languages“.

• CulturedMed presents a wide-ranging group of resources; the page is sponsored by State University of New York Institute of Technology (which offers degree programs in Health Services Management). On this site is a list – compiled by a librarian – of health materials in languages other than English.

• DiversityRX is a project supported by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, the Cross Cultural Health Care Program and National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), an interesting site which also links to a page about State Laws Addressing Health Disparities.

• 24 Languages, written by health science librarians at University of Utah Spencer Eccles Health Science Library, links to a collection of 200+ educational written brochures or sound recordings in 24 languages for use by patients or their families. Thanks to them for creating this valuable resource.

• The EthnoMed site “contains information about cultural beliefs, medical issues and other related issues pertinent to the health care of recent immigrants to Seattle or the U.S., many of whom are refugees fleeing war-torn parts of the world“. The guides are produced by volunteer physicians, residents and librarians.

• Coalition for Health Communications (CHC) is a consortium group made up of the Health Communications divisions of American Public Health Association, International Communication Association and National Communications Association.

• SPIRAL (Selected Patient Information Pages in Asian Languages) is a project of Tufts University’s Hirsh Health Science Library.

• I found the National Center for Cultural Competence linked from the Georgetown University Center for Child & Human Development.

• Harvard School of Public Health publishes a list of resources for clinicians, epidemiologists or health workers about Health Literacy at http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/healthliteracy/

• Health information in more than 80 languages can be searched and printed out from the website run by Refugee Health Information Network (RHIN), which describes itself as a “national collaborative partnership managed by refugee health professionals, whose objective is to provide quality multilingual, health information resources for those providing care to resettled refugees and asylees“. All materials available on the RHIN website are freely available.

• Also found on the RHIN site: A recent report written by Kate Flewelling, a National Library of Medicine Associate Fellow, entitled “Addressing the Need for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Health Information for Newly Arriving Refugee Populations“. Click this link to read her 27-page report released in Aug 2008 (PDF).

• An online textbook, “Culture, Health and Literacy: A Guide to Health Education Materials for Adults with Limited English Literacy Skills” was created by Julie McKinney and Sabrina Kurtz-Rossi in 2000, and is housed on the World Education.org website.

• National Cancer Institute published a guide known as The Pink Book which is an online revision of the original 1989 book entitled “Making Health Communication Programs Work“

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On the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) there are a variety of links regarding culturally competent health care. Here are a few of those subject specific pages:

• HHS Office of Minority Health, which has a page specifically for health care providers, addressing National Standards on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services.

• HHS Office of Disease Prevention & Health Promotion links to a variety of “Health Communication Activities“.

• HHS “Quick Guide to Health Literacy and Older Adults“.

• HHS – On the WomensHealth.gov site is a page specifically for “Health Professionals – Addressing Cultural Competencies“.

• Centers for Disease Control & Prevention has a site about Global Migration and Quarantine

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Finally, in consideration of learning complex folkways and routines in daily American life that immigrant families must master, here are two sites providing supporting information and sources for referrals about ‘acculturation’:

• Bridging Refugee Youth and Childrens’ Services (BRYCS). This website provides many diverse information sources for individuals or families who may be in need of referrals to social services, counseling, settling into a community or other activities of daily life. As a librarian, I found their subject-specific Annotated Bibliography links very informative.

• United States Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) has a Refugee Health Issues page with some valuable links. As an example of the types of materials linked on this site, there is a resource entitled “Journey of Hope: Cultural Orientation for Refugee Women in the U.S” which outlines an daily-life type of guide for immigrant women. Each chapter can be read online or downloaded individually.  Learning Module #1 is titled “Applied Life Skills” and provides explanations on how to shop, cleaning materials, banks and bank accounts, housing, transportation and how to apply for a drivers’ license.