Through a Department of Health-funded grant, HPA designed and implemented the cultural competence-training project to address issues of access and utilization of health care disparities among immigrant and minority communities in New York City.  HPA collaborated with three New York City-based plans and the Center for Immigrant Health (CIH) at the New York University School of Medicine to develop a multi-targeted strategy to improve the level of cultural competence of the direct service staff in the participating health plans, improve the level of competence of the plans’ network of primary care physicians and to develop tools to empower the immigrant and minority member populations to access and utilize health services.  

Health plans analyzed claims data, which identified zip codes that indicated poor utilization of the health care system.  The project then sought to engage primary care providers and health plan staff serving the targeted zip codes.  Needs assessment surveys and follow up focus groups were conducted for both health plan staff and health care professionals and was used to help inform and tailor the cultural competence trainings. 

Patient empowerment tools (PETs) were developed and translated into four target languages (Spanish, Chinese, Russian and Haitian/Creole) in addition to English.  The PETs were designed to educate members/patients about preventive health practices such as annual well visits, screenings, and immunizations.  An immunization and screening schedule was developed for patient reference and language access cards were developed for non-English speaking patients to ask for translation services. 

This three-pronged approach to cultural competence training for non-clinical staff, PCPs, and health plan member’s aims to reduce cultural and linguistic misunderstandings through verbal and nonverbal communication.  The long-term objective of this program was to advocate the broad use of cultural competence assessment and empowerment tools and training programs. 

Plans involved in the Cultural Competence Project were:

• Fidelis Health Care of New York
• United Healthcare/AmeriChoice
• Neighborhood Health Providers