Office of Minority Health

Arizona Department of Health Services

Phoenix, AZ 85007

Project: AZ Minority Health Grant

Amount: $150,000

The Arizona Department of Health Services promotes and protects the health of Arizona's children and adults. Its mission is to set the standard for personal and community health through direct care, science, public policy and leadership. The department operates programs in behavioral health, disease prevention and control, health promotion, community public health, environmental health, maternal and child health, and emergency preparedness. It also regulates child care and assisted living centers, nursing homes, hospitals, other health care providers and emergency services.

Project Abstract

The purpose of the Arizona Department of Health Services (ADHS) grant is to implement a comprehensive evidence-based approach to addressing social determinants of health that affect Arizona’s racial and ethnic communities. Healthy Arizona, through the Language Access Services project, is intended to reduce health disparities through the adoption and implementation of the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health and Health Care (CLAS). ADHS will implement the project through a collaborative partnership with the Arizona Health Alliance for Language Access Rights and other partners. The project addresses the lack of language access services in health care settings, the growing need for language access services in community health center settings and the barriers that community health centers face in providing these services (including limited staff time and other resources). The project will implement strategies and interventions to achieve the following goals:

• Collaborate with partners to build infrastructure for and facilitate implementation of the CLAS standards
• Improve the cultural and linguistic competence and diversity of the community health center and local health department workforces
• Enhance consumers’ health service experience through awareness and availability of language assistance services
• Improve the availability of socioeconomic status and health data on racial/ethnic minority populations

To achieve the aforementioned goals, ADHS will implement multiple strategies including but not limited to:

• Collaborating with the Division of Public Health Prevention Services to streamline the formation and integration of community partnerships
• Assessing local public health systems’ readiness to implement the National CLAS Standards
• Developing training modules for workforce development programs
• Implementing effective language access policies, practices and procedures that comply with Title VI in community health centers and local health departments
• Educating consumers about language access policies, practices and procedures that comply with Title VI
• Identifying gaps in available minority data and resources through collaborative partnerships

The primary intended outcome is to increase the number of community health centers and local health departments within the state that have adopted the CLAS standards by 10 percent. To evaluate project activities and outcomes, ADHS will collect data on process measures (e.g. number of events and number of meeting attendees) and will conduct training- and program-specific evaluations.

Objective

Improved access to, and appropriate utilization of, health and other community-based services and systems through user-centered design for racial/ethnic minorities (e.g., health IT, culturally/ linguistically appropriate services, service provider education/ training, workforce diversity)