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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Alberto J.F. Cardelle, PhD, MPH, MPH Program, East Stroudsburg University, 200 Prospect Street, East Stroudsburg, PA 18301, 570-422-3401, acardelle@po-box.esu.edu and Lissett Lahoz, BS, Health, ESU, 860 High Street, East Stroudsburg, PA 18360.

In the Fall of 2005 the Latino Leadership Alliance of the Lehigh Valley in Pennsylvania brokered an agreement among the 8 regional hospitals and health systems serving the Lehigh Valley and the Poconos assuring a commitment to implement the Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Standards of Care (CLAS). Under the agreement the institutions committed themselves to implementing the standards in order to better serve the growing Latino population in the region, which had grown by 300% in some areas.

This paper surveys the implementation of the standards by using Hogwood and Gunn's “perfect implementation model,” which sets out 10 preconditions required for implementation. Using the preconditions as benchmarks and collecting data from administrators and practitioners and community activist (quarterly using a web-based instrument) the paper identifies the barriers, opportunities and threats the institutions are encountering as they try to implement the CLAS Standards.

The preliminary information shows that institutions have been able to move the policy forward through its upper-tier management but that the implementation has encountered barriers in the mid-level management and with physician practices associated with the institutions. A factor facilitating the implementation of the policies identified by the data collection relates to the pressure the institution are sensing from the fact that other competitors are also implementing the standards which may impact their patient base. Within the next year three more waves of data collection will have taken place, and a clearer understanding of the factors will be available.

Learning Objectives:

• a) Participants will learn how to use the perfect implementation model as an analytic framework.
• b) Participants will understand the difficulties associated with implementing the CLAS standards.

Keywords: Access to Care, Latino Health

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered