Cultural Competence and Public Psychiatry

Abstract

The National CLAS Standards are intended to advance health equity, improve quality, and help eliminate health care disparities by establishing a blueprint for health and health care organizations to: Principal Standard: 1. Provide effective, equitable, understandable, and respectful quality care and services that are responsive to diverse cultural health beliefs and practices, preferred languages, health literacy, and other communication needs. Governance, Leadership, and Workforce: 2. Advance and sustain organizational governance and leadership that promotes CLAS and health equity through policy, practices, and allocated resources. 3. Recruit, promote, and support a culturally and linguistically diverse governance, leadership, and workforce that are responsive to the population in the service area. 4. Educate and train governance, leadership, and workforce in culturally and linguistically appropriate policies and practices on an ongoing basis. Communication and Language Assistance: 5. Offer language assistance to individuals who have limited English proficiency and/or other communication needs, at no cost to them, to facilitate timely access to all health care and services. 6. Inform all individuals of the availability of language assistance services clearly and in their preferred language, verbally and in writing. 7. Ensure the competence of individuals providing language assistance, recognizing that the use of untrained individuals and/or minors as interpreters should be avoided. 8. Provide easy-to-understand print and multimedia materials and signage in the languages commonly used by the populations in the service area. Engagement, Continuous Improvement, and Accountability: 9. Establish culturally and linguistically appropriate goals, policies, and management accountability, and infuse them throughout the organization's planning and operations. 10. Conduct ongoing assessments of the organization's CLAS-related activities and integrate CLASrelated measures into measurement and continuous quality improvement activities. 11. Collect and maintain accurate and reliable demographic data to monitor and evaluate the impact of CLAS on health equity and outcomes and to inform service delivery.

The Organizational Multicultural Competence Assessment (OMCA): A tool to assess an organization’s multicultural competence and adherence to the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Healthcare (the National CLAS Standards).

“…Multicultural competency is at the heart of person-centered and recovery-oriented care, and behavioral healthcare (i.e., mental health and addiction services) must be multiculturally competent and address the cultural beliefs, values, and worldviews of clients in order to meet the needs of the whole person (Delphin-Rittmon et al, 2018; Díaz et al, 2016). Also, the provision of multiculturally competent care is one important strategy needed to address health disparities in healthcare systems (Betancourt et al, 2005; Satcher, 2001).…”