Support System for Organizational Cultural Competency Assessment and Improvement

PROJECT SUMMARY Persistentpervasive healthcare disparities disproportionately affect racial and ethnic minority communitiesTraining health professionals to work effectively with people from different culturesorganizational policiesproceduresand practices that address the needs of racialethnicand other underserved populationsand establishing relationships between health organizations and other organizations serving the same populations are critical to equitable careCulturally competent healthcare can significantly increase the equity of care for racial and ethnic minorities to ultimately reduce health disparitiesThe goal of proposed Phase II research and development effort is to complete the design and production of JourneyStarta research basedcomputerassisted cultural competency assessment and action planning toolkit to increase the capacity of smallto medium sized health organizations to better meet the needs of racial and ethnic minoritiesSpecificallythe proposed effort willrefine the data functions of JourneyStartdesign the technical assistance functions of JourneyStartandassess the implementation and utility of JourneyStart based on feedback from a sample of smallto mid sized health organizations that work at the community levelApproximatelyhealth organizations will be recruited to test the entire spectrum of services available from JourneyStartfrom assessment to action planningand the interface with the systemStaff from the organizations will participate in an evaluation to discuss the components and utility of systemincludingaease of the interface and useblimitationsandcrecommendations for packaging the servicesTo develop JourneyStart s benchmarking capabilityclusters of organizations will be established based on analysis of the organizationssizedemographics of the people they serveand geographic locationThe aims of the proposed research align both with the mission of the National Institutes of Health to apply knowledge to enhance health and life and its goal to foster fundamental creative discoveriesinnovative research strategiesand research applications for protecting and improving healthFurthermorethe proposed product will advance the mission of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health DisparitiesNIMHDto promote minority health and support efforts that reduce health disparitiesalong with the commitment of NIMHD to support interventions and translational research that address cultural competency and social determinants of health