Programmatic Priorities

Language Access

The HHS Office of Minority Health (OMH) is committed to supporting meaningful access to its programs and to building capacity among health organizations to enhance the availability and quality of language access services.  

OMH Language Access Plan

OMH’s Language Access Plan (LAP) aims to promote meaningful access and engagement for all individuals and organizations that utilize OMH resources. The OMH LAP guides OMH strategies for staff to advance language access in OMH policies, programs, and operations.

Read the OMH Language Access Plan

The language access goals in the 2023 HHS Equity Action Plan and the 2023 HHS Language Access Plan seek to ensure that persons with limited English proficiency (LEP) have meaningful access to HHS-administered programs and activities. To learn more about our efforts to support individuals and communities with LEP, and to access resources available in multiple languages, visit the HHS LEP webpage.

Program Highlights

The National CLAS Standards offer a blueprint for providing services that are respectful of and responsive to individual cultural health beliefs and practices, preferred languages, health literacy levels, and communication needs. OMH promotes the adoption of the National CLAS Standards in our grant initiatives, partner engagement and by providing e-learning programs and other resources through Think Cultural Health. 

Under Fiscal Year 2023 Appropriations, Congress called upon OMH to research, develop, and test methods of informing LEP individuals about the availability of language assistance services. The goal of this research is to develop a universal symbol informing people about the availability of language assistance services.  

As part of this initiative, OMH has conducted research, held several listening sessions, and published a Request for Information in April 2024 soliciting input from language access stakeholders to inform the development of a universal language assistance symbol. Information from the research, listening sessions, and RFI were used to inform draft symbol designs and a plan for user testing of the draft symbols. Next steps include user testing and refinement of the symbol design.

The PEALS initiative supports the development and testing of methods to inform individuals with LEP about the availability of language access services in health care-related settings. Through this initiative, recipients implement and evaluate strategies to enhance language access services through policy development and implementation, technology utilization, education for individuals with LEP, and education for providers, including medical support staff.  

Resources