8. Health care organizations should develop, implement, and promote a written strategic plan that outlines clear goals, policies, operational plans, and management accountability/oversight mechanisms to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services.
9. Health care organizations should conduct initial and ongoing organizational self-assessments of CLAS related activities and are encouraged to integrate cultural and linguistic competence-related measures into their internal audits, performance improvement programs, patient satisfaction Assessments, and Outcomes-Based Evaluations.
10. Health care organizations should ensure that data on the individual patient's/consumer's race, ethnicity, and spoken and written language are collected in health records, integrated into the organization's management information systems, and periodically updated.
11. Health care organizations should maintain a current demographic, cultural, and epidemiological profile of the community as well as a needs assessment to accurately plan for and implement services that respond to the cultural and linguistic characteristics of the service area.
12. Health care organizations should develop participatory, collaborative partnerships with communities and utilize a variety of formal and informal mechanisms to facilitate community and patient/ consumer involvement in designing and implementing CLAS-related activities.
13. Health care organizations should ensure that conflict and grievance resolution processes are culturally and linguistically sensitive and capable of identifying, preventing, and resolving cross-cultural conflicts or complaints by patients/consumers.
14. Health care organizations are encouraged to regularly make available to the public information about their progress and successful innovations in implementing the CLAS Standards and to provide public notice in their communities about the availability of this information.

Resource Information Links:

• Strategic Planning
• Assessment
• Epidemiology
• Data
• Quality Improvement
• Community Organizations and Partnerships
• Client Satisfaction Surveys
• Grievance
• Media/Publications that Target Diverse Populations
   

Strategic Planning

• Strategic Plan for Addressing Health Disparities Fiscal Years 2002-2006  
   
  It's produced by National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of National Institutes of Health. NIAID’s Strategic Plan for Addressing Health Disparities Fiscal Years 2002-2006 focuses on those diseases within the institute’s research portfolio that disproportionately
  affect underserved minority and socioeconomic populations. The plan constitutes specific tactical objectives for providing tools necessary to eliminate health disparities.

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Assessment

• A Guide to Planning and Implementing Cultural Competence Organizational Self-Assessment
   
  This document offers guidelines to inform organizational self-assessment in cultural competence, specifically, it presents a rationale for organizational self-assessment, essential elements of the process, benefits, and useful steps in planning & implementation of an organizational self-assessment.
   
• A Patient-Centered Guide to Implementing Language Access Services in Healthcare Organizations
   
  The Office of Minority Health has sponsored the development of the guide to help healthcare organizations implement effective language access services (LAS) to meet the needs of their limited English proficient (LEP) patients, thereby increasing their access to health care.
   
• CLAS A-Z: A Practical Guide for Implementing the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) in Health Care.
   
  This guide contains a downloadable and reproducible "checklists," forms, and syllabi that healthcare organizations can use or adapt to their specific needs. The guide presents a suggested order of implementation of the CLAS Standards.
   
• The Commonwealth Fund, Innovations
   
  On the page, please look under Clinical tools for valuable links and "how to" information.
   
• Cultural Competence Organizational Assessment Protocol
   
  Developed by the Arizona Department of Health Services, Division of Behavioral Health, this site has a plan, policy and an organizational assessment protocol. The organizational assessment protocol has a process and an assessment instrument with questions that mirror the CLAS Standards. 
   
• The Cultural and Linguistic Competence Policy Assessment (CLCPA)
   
  CLCPA was developed by the National Center for Cultural Competence (NCCC) at the request of the Bureau of Primary Health Care, Health Resources and Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Service to assist community health centers to advance and sustain cultural and linguistic competence.
   
• Culture Matters
   
  It is an initiative launched in 2006 by Health Services Advisory Group (HSAG), Arizona's Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO), designed to eliminate health care disparities by helping primary care physicians serving Medicare beneficiaries to assess and improve their skills in providing culturally and linguistically competent care for a diverse and ever-changing Arizona population.
   
• Indicators of Cultural Competence in Health Care Delivery Organizations: An Organizational Cultural Competence Assessment Profile, April 2002
    
  The assessment profile labels and describes domains, focus areas with processes and output indicators to help organizations assess cultural competency.
   
• Think Cultural Health
   
  Its has many links to Assessments, training and tools information.

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Epidemiology

• Measuring Health Disparities 
   
  It was created to facilitate the use of the interactive course Measuring Health Disparities developed by John Lynch, PhD, and Sam Harper, PhD, of McGill University, and produced by the Michigan Public Health Training Center (MPHTC).
   
• Methodological Issues in Measuring Health Disparities, July 2005
   
  This document looks at issues that affect the measurement of disparities in health between groups in a population with examples.

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Data

• Arizona Health Disparities Center Data Webpage

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Quality Improvement             

• National Healthcare Disparities Report, 2006
   
  Developed by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), this document tracks disparities in both quality of and access to health care in the United States for both the general population and for AHRQ's congressionally designated priority populations.
   
• Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities: Quality Improvement in Medicaid Managed Care Toolkit, January 2007
   
  Developed by Center for Health Care Strategies, Inc., this toolkit details the experiences of a collaborative workgroup of Medicaid managed care organizations. The workgroup implemented innovative strategies to identify and address disparities in three areas: birth outcomes and immunizations, asthma care, and diabetes care. The toolkit provides an overview of the kinds of problems workgroup members identified, their strategies for addressing barriers to care specific to racial and ethnic minorities, and the results of their efforts.

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Community  Partnerships

• Arizona Health Disparities Center Multicultural Organizations Webpage

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Client Satisfaction Surveys

• A Patient Satisfaction Survey for Bureau of Primary Health Care Grantees
   
  The Patient Satisfaction Survey Package was developed by clinical networks with support from the Bureau of Primary Health Care, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This site has links to sample satisfaction surveys in different electronic file format in English and Spanish and provides guidance for administration and data collection and analysis. 
   
• Diverse patients, Disparate Experience: The Use of Standardized Patient Satisfaction Surveys in Assessing the Cultural Competence of Health care Organizations, March 2001
   
  Developed by California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, this document purpose is to asses the usefulness of standardized consumer surveys, makes recommendations and identifies alternatives to standardized survey for assessing cultural competence. 

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Grievance

• Limited English Proficient Enrollee Access to Health Plan Grievance Systems: An Assessment of Health Plan Compliance with DMHC Regulations Title 28 Section 1300.68 (b)(3)
   
  Developed by California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, this document describes examples of compliance in California care plans and provides names of care plans, number of enrollees and percentage of California’s managed care population that organization provides for.

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Media/Publications that Target Diverse Populations

• Arizona Health Disparities Center Multicultural Media Webpage

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