263514 HHS Office of Minority Health's enhanced National CLAS Standards: A blueprint for providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services to older adults

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 : 3:18 PM - 3:30 PM

Guadalupe Pacheco, MSW , Office of the Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health, Rockville, MD
C. Godfrey Jacobs , Health Determinants & Disparities Practice, SRA International, Inc., Rockville, MD
Darci Graves, MA, MA, MPP , Health Determinants & Disparities Practice, SRA International, Inc., Rockville, MD
Jennifer Kenyon, BA , Health Determinants & Disparities Practice, SRA International, Inc., Rockville, MD
Crystal Barksdale, PhD , Health Determinants & Disparities Practice, SRA International, Inc., Rockville, MD
     
Cultural and linguistic competency has emerged as one strategy to help improve quality of care and eliminate health disparities. In 2000, the HHS Office of Minority Health (OMH) developed the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health Care (the National CLAS Standards), which provides organizations with a framework to best serve diverse populations. OMH has completed a two-year enhancement initiative for the National CLAS Standards, which included public comment, analysis of the literature, and ongoing input from an advisory committee. In Spring 2012, OMH will publish the enhanced National CLAS Standards, revised to reflect the tremendous growth in the field of cultural and linguistic competency in the past decade.

The enhanced National CLAS Standards will provide a blueprint for health and health care organizations to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services. Adoption of the enhanced National CLAS Standards will strengthen organizations' ability to provide high quality services to all populations of their community.

This presentation will discuss the enhancements made to the National CLAS Standards, which will have a broader scope in terms of health, culture and audience. This broad scope will facilitate the involvement of stakeholders at every level and in every role of health in achieving health equity by providing culturally and linguistically appropriate services. This session will present the enhanced National CLAS Standards as a practical tool for leaders in aging and public health to use to advance health equity, improve quality and help eliminate health care disparities for older adults.

Learning Areas:
Administration, management, leadership
Communication and informatics
Diversity and culture

Learning Objectives:
Discuss the enhanced National CLAS Standards as a tool to improve quality through the provision of culturally and linguistically appropriate services.

Keywords: Cultural Competency, Health Disparities

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I assist in developing policies and initiatives to mitigate health disparities that affect racial and ethnic minority communities. I serve as project officer for agency contracts, grants, and other procurement instruments. Moreover, I concurrently staff the Office of Minority Health’s Center for Linguistic and Cultural Competence in Health Care.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 4274.0: Immigrant and Minority Health and Aging