One of the Afghan Coalition’s goals is to improve the health and well-being of immigrant communities in the Bay Area. To make this goal a reality, for the past two years we have coordinated community resources through the “Health Leadership Consortium,” a project of our Afghan Health Partnership Program. Funded by The California Endowment and facilitated by Dr. Valerie Smith, this consortium brings together healthcare professionals, ethnic organization representatives and community advocates. In the last year, the Consortium held three major meetings in June 2008, October 2008 and February 2009.
In a recent meeting in February, 30 participants gathered to hear about Kaiser Permanente’s efforts to provide culturally competent care to our local diverse communities, including the Afghan population.
The Reverend Carol Estes discussed Kaiser’s approach to providing culturally sensitive spiritual care services to patients. She explained, “We are trained to remove ourselves, our beliefs, and our attachments to our faith traditions in order to attend to the spirit of individuals who are in our presence when they are not feeling well.” The emphasis is on listening to the patient and meeting him or her at the point of need.
Dave Newhouse, M.D., who is Kaiser’s Assistant Physician-In-Chief for marketing and diversity, provided a broad overview of their eight diversity programs. Kaiser’s national Cultural Training Program, as an example, created training videos for doctors with realistic cultural scenarios to help the physicians learn how to respond appropriately to intercultural challenges. As Newhouse described this effort, attendees at the consortium meeting learned that discrimination can occur not just from doctors toward patients, but from patients toward their doctors, between nurses, and among any other staff members. Being sensitized to one’s own biases is an important aspect to successfully diminish discrimination.
The event ended with a demonstration of Kaiser’s new remote video interpreting program. Led by Maria Servin, attendees watched as the interpreter service was dialed and the interpreter appeared on a computer monitor in a matter of seconds. These monitors are available in all the primary care and emergency rooms to allow for video interpretation on demand. Although video interpretation is not yet available in Pashto or Dari, Kaiser—like other major healthcare organizations in the area—still has the AT&T Language Line to provide for immediate telephone interpretation when you or a family member goes to a Kaiser facility.
Save the Date!
Our next Health Consortium meeting will be held on Friday, April 24.
We plan to hold a follow up meeting to our October Refugee Health Summit at which Dr. Carl Stempel, Professor of Sociology at California State University East Bay, presented the results of the Afghan community health and mental health survey research and Dr. Valerie Smith presented relevant results from her dissertation research on the Information Needs of Afghan Refugee Women. At our April meeting we will have time for discussion and brainstorming about how best to meet various needs found in the research.
For more information on the Consortium please send us an email through our Web site or call 510-745-1682.