Track 3-1c
Management

Assessing Quality Care for Culturally Diverse Populations in Health Care Systems

As care to culturally diverse populations becomes a more pressing priority, ways to document actions and effectiveness provide the opportunity for health care systems with measurable information on their status and progress. It can also benefit these organizations if they can benchmark and compare their status as well as review and learn from those making progress from their efforts.
  The cultural competence self-assessment protocol is a paper-and-pencil tool developed in consultation with hospital based health care systems throughout the US and designed to provide explicit data and information for measuring cultural diversity activities. Its content areas and questions are formed around four "cornerstones" of cultural competence: and organization's relationship with its diverse communities; the administration and management's relationship with its staff; inter-staff relationships at all levels; and the patient provider relationship. Scoring enables organizations to be rated along a five-point scale ranging from inaction, symbolic action, formalized internal action, non-integrated internal and external activities, and the cultural diversity learning organization.
  Application of findings from the protocol has been used to identify strengths and challenges, a common database, and for organizational comparison. Some health care systems have also used it to set priorities and to discuss with their boards for the purposes of establishing a "status in time" and to review for progress.

Dennis P. Andrulis, PhD, MPH
Head, Office of Urban Populations
The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10029
212-822-7360
212-822-7369
dandrulis@nyam.org

Dennis P. Andrulis oversees the Office of Urban Populations at the New York Academy of Medicine in New York City. He is responsible for creating, developing and conducting policy relevant research related to national and New York State health issues. He has directed the development of projects, prepared major reports and published on a wide range of issues affecting hospitals and safety net providers, vulnerable populations and their communities. Dr. Andrulis is currently Principal Investigator for a major report on managed care in the inner city, projects concerning cultural diversity in health care including a national conference on the subject, and a compendium and analysis of information on the social and health characteristics of the nation’s major urban areas. He also directs a New York State Forum for Child Health. In his ten year tenure as President of the National Public Health and Hospital Institute, Dr. Andrulis instituted a research and education agenda concerning public hospital systems and the safety net, including national surveys on hospital HIV care, teaching hospitals and their adaptation to managed care, patient-centered care and health care professional training on policy. He is a founding member and board member of the American International Health Alliance which, with Agency for International Development assistance, establishes health care partnerships between the US and Central-Eastern Europe. He has also served as a member of the Board of Trustees for The Hospital for Sick Children in Washington, DC. Dr. Andrulis holds concurrent academic appointments in The George Washington University Department of Health Services Management and Policy and The Columbia University School of Public Health.
  Prior experience includes tenures in the Office of the Secretary, the Department of Health and Human Services, specializing in alcohol, drug abuse and mental health programs, the Institute of Medicine-National Academy of Sciences, and the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational-Community Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and a Masters of Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Laura Avakian, MA
Senior Vice President, Human Resources
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
330 Brookline Avenue
Boston, MA 02215
Phone: (617) 667-2800
Fax: (617) 975-5426
lavakian@bidmc.harvard.edu

Laura Avakian is senior vice president, human resources, for Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston and for its parent corporation, CareGroup. She has held executive human resource positions in healthcare for 24 years. She received her BA degree from the University of Missouri at Columbia and her MA degree from Northwestern University. She is past-president of the American Society for Healthcare Human Resources Administration, and has received the distinguished service award, literature award and chapter leadership award from that society. She received the 1996 Award for Professional Excellence in Human Resources Management from the Society for Human Resource Management, which has 50,000 members internationally. She has served as editor of the Yearbook of Healthcare Management and authored numerous chapters and articles on human resources management.  NEXT >

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