Assessing minority health care access in the Brentwood community

INTRODUCTION The purpose of the Brentwood Community survey is to identify the barriers that exist to health care access affecting the Latino community (54%) in the Hamlet of Brentwood (54,168), New York. Survey findings will be utilized to assess the community's capacity to address these health care needs and to increases access to health care resources. METHODS The design of the survey employs bilingual, culturally and literacy sensitive questions administered door-to-door in oral format by trained community volunteers. This allows for population health assessment and surveillance, health promotion and prevention of disease as well as evidence-based public health interventions. RESULTS Statistical analysis of the survey results will allow the community to identify it's demographic components, insurance status, health history, healthcare access, and barriers to care. Evaluation of these results will be compared to a sample survey conducted in the summer of 2004 in a smaller geographic area of Brentwood (308 participants). These preliminary results showed that 70.6% spoke Spanish, 45% had a high school diploma, 53.4% had a full time job, 26.7% reported not having health insurance , and 26.9% reported having an emergency room visit ( mainly for asthma and diabetes). The comparison will allow us to examine the identified barriers and health care needs of this community. CONCLUSION Once data collection is complete and data is analyzed we will disseminate this information to community members in a community forum and prepare a report that will be distributed to health care stakeholders and policy makers in the Brentwood community.