The National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) in Health and Health Care have been enhanced and A Blueprint for Advancing and Sustaining CLAS Policy and Practice (2013) is available.

The Affordable Care Act puts you – not insurance companies – back in charge of your health care. The following rights and consumer protections are available through the health care law.

Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) and Uniform Glossary: Most health insurance plans and issuers must provide you with an easy-to-understand summary about a health plan’s benefits and coverage.

Consumer Assistance Program: State Consumer Assistance Programs help you file complaints and appeals, enroll in health coverage, and learn about your rights and responsibilities as a health care consumer.

Appealing Health Plan Decisions: You have the right to ask your plan to reconsider a denial of payment for services.

Preventive Care: You may be eligible to receive recommended preventive health services at no cost.

Patient’s Bill of Rights: The “Patient’s Bill of Rights” outlines consumer protections and gives you the knowledge you need to make informed choices about your health.

Children’s Pre-Existing Conditions:  Insurance companies can no longer limit or deny benefits to children under age 19 due to a pre-existing health condition.

Doctor Choice & ER Access: You have the right to choose the doctor you want from your plan’s network or seek emergency care at a hospital outside of your health plan’s network.

Grandfathered Health Plans: You have the right to keep your “grandfathered” health plan if you were covered before the health care law was enacted. Grandfathered plans do not have to provide some of the rights and protections under the Affordable Care Act.

Curbing Insurance Cancellations: Insurance companies can no longer cancel your coverage just because you made an honest mistake on your application.

Advance Health Equity Now: Uniting our Communities to Bring Health Care Coverage to All is a call to action from the Office of Minority Health and their partners. The goal is to improve “the health of our communities and increase access to quality, affordable health care for everyone”. Resources include posters, postcards and community engagement tools.

The Center for Health Equity and Place offers tools, reports, and advocacy approaches to create “…sustainable communities of opportunity that allow everyone to participate and prosper” according to the mission statement of the PolicyLink.

The February 2013  special issue of Social Science and Medicine explores the cultural and social aspects of sleep.  Topics include (1) the critical relevance of socioeconomic circumstances and cultural norms affecting sleep and health; (2) the interplay of biology, cultural meaning, gender, and medicalization on the interpretation and self-management of disordered sleep; (3) the roles that politics and consumers play in influencing and sometimes compromising health policy concerning infant and child sleep; and (4) the evolving social norms and messages that influence how sleep and sleep problems are perceived across the life course.

Finding Answers: Disparities Research for Change, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is a repository for research on interventions that reduce disparities.

Blacks Less Likely to Receive Kidney Transplant Early based on a study by researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. For additional information on African-American health see Medline Plus, a resource sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Culture and Human Rights from The Levine Institute of the State University of New York consists of six lessons that teach using “the emerging framework of transnational human rights from a cultural perspective, using case studies from around the world that demonstrate the contemporary global variation in human rights discourses and practices.” The modules are:

 

 

• Culture and      HR Lesson 1 What Are Human Rights?
• Culture and      HR Lesson 2 What Are The Core Human Rights Instruments?
• Culture and      HR Lesson 3 What Are The Main Mechanisms for Implementing Human Rights?
• Culture and      HR Lesson 4 Global Issues in Human Rights: Torture
• Culture and      HR Lesson 5 Global Issues in Human Rights: Women and Children
• Culture and      HR Lesson 6 Global Issues in Human Rights: Indigenous Peoples

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation “Using data from the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems Clinician & Group Survey Adult Primary Care instrument, this study found that race and acculturation status were significantly associated with experiences of care, including patient ratings of their provider and perceptions of shared decision making and helpfulness. Consistent with previous research, unacculturated Hispanics had the poorest self-rated health scores, gave significantly higher provider ratings, and had more interest in shared decision making than other groups. The authors conclude that race and acculturation may play a role in physician-patient relationships and overall health care delivery.” (Hasnain M, Schwartz A, Girotti J, et al. Differences in patient-reported experiences of care by race and acculturation status. Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health. 2012 Nov; DOI:  10.1007/s10903-012-9728-x).

The TeamSTEPPS Limited English Proficiency module is designed to help you develop and deploy a customized plan to train your staff in teamwork skills and lead a medical teamwork improvement initiative in your organization from initial concept development through to sustainment of positive changes. This evidence-based module will provide insight into the core concepts of teamwork as they are applied to your work with patients who have difficulty communicating in English. Comprehensive curricula and instructional guides include short case studies and videos illustrating teamwork opportunities and successes, according to their web site.