Strengthening Cultural Competency

The Education Fund of Family Planning Advocates of New York State is dedicated to increasing access to culturally and linguistically competent reproductive health services for immigrant women and men throughout New York State. Since 2004, the Education Fund has collaborated with family planning providers to help them assess and enhance their capacity to serve immigrants and limited English proficient patients.

Based on the framework provided by the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health Care, Increasing Immigrant Women’s Access to Reproductive Health Care: Strengthening Cultural Competency among Family Planning Providers helps family planning providers respond to the growing needs of an increasingly diverse patient population by understanding what it means to be culturally competent in health care and how to achieve cultural competence within an institutional setting.

Building on expert opinions in the field of cultural competency and extensive research on best practices, the Education Fund has developed a practical, user-friendly assessment process that helps family planning providers enhance their clinic’s performance on the CLAS Standards. The assessment has been piloted at five family planning centers in New York State and additional assessments will be carried out over the next couple of years. For more information regarding this project, please email info@edfundfpa.org.

Promoting Cultural Competency among Family Planning Providers: Lessons from the Field
In an effort to disseminate our assessment process and findings along with best practice models for serving immigrant women, the Education Fund convened a one-day meeting on June 15, 2006 in New York City entitled Promoting Cultural Competency among Family Planning Providers: Lessons from the Field. Held at the offices of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the meeting brought together participants from three centers to share the assessment methods, results and lessons learned from the project, as well as to brainstorm future actions to improve access to care for limited English proficient patients. Among the 70 attendees were:

• Representatives of the three assessment sites
• Experts in the field of cultural and linguistic competency
• Representatives of Planned Parenthood centers and individual family planning centers
• Representatives of immigrant-serving organizations
• New York State Department of Health employees
• Health care advocates
• Policymakers

To read the final meeting report please click here.

National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health Care
The National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Healthcare (CLAS Standards) are a collective set of mandates, guidelines and recommendations issued by the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Minority Health intended to inform, guide and facilitate required and recommended practices related to culturally and linguistically appropriate health services.

Developed in 2000, the CLAS standards are proposed as a means to correct inequities that currently exist in the provision of health services and to make these services more responsive to the individual needs of all patients/consumers. The ultimate goal of the standards is to contribute to the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities and to improve the health of all Americans.

The CLAS Standards are comprised of fourteen standards that are organized by themes:

• Culturally Competent Services
• Language Access Services
• Organizational Support for Cultural Competence

Within this framework, there are three levels of varying stringency:

• Mandates
• Recommendations
• Guidelines

Currently, the only mandates are related to the Language Access Services standards, which means that all health care providers receiving Federal funds must provide language assistance services to people with limited English proficiency.

For more information on the CLAS standards, visit the Office of Minority Health’s CLAS website.