Impact of enabling services utilization on health at community health centers serving Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders

Enabling services are non-clinical services provided at community health centers that facilitate access and delivery of quality health care to medically underserved patients. These services include case management, benefit counseling or eligibility assistance, health education and supportive counseling, interpretation, outreach, and transportation. However, little data is available about the impact of enabling services on quality improvement, culturally and linguistically appropriate care, and health outcomes among medically underserved patients. This project seeks to address this gap and examines the association between enabling services utilization and national quality process measures at four community health centers serving predominantly Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). The community health centers are federally qualified health centers located in Hawaii, New York, and Washington. The analysis will include eight categories of enabling services and four performance measures including child immunizations, adult diabetes, healthy weight counseling among children, and healthy birthweight among pregnant women. The study will assess the impact of utilization patterns of enabling services on process and health outcomes. The presentation will also provide an overview of the demographics and health conditions of enabling service users compared to non-users at health centers. Overall, the project aims to provide a better understanding of the relationship between enabling services utilization and process/health outcomes by AAPIs and useful information to help policy makers effectively address health center needs as they strive to improve access and quality care to medically underserved AAPIs and other safety net patients.