Eliminating Disparities in Care

Knowledge from a recent fellowship will help us all be more culturally aware

Bringing worlds together

Jarret Patton, M.D. (left) and Cynthia Atamian recently joined other Cultural Awareness Implementation Team members at Allentown's Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum for a retreat. On display in the museum lobby was Los Continentes, part of a multicultural mural that will be permanently installed and displayed at LVH-17th and Chew later this year.

According to national studies, Latino and Asian people are less likely than Caucasian to receive opiate-based medications for pain. African-American women are at higher risk than Caucasian women for preterm births. Low-income people often receive fewer angioplasties for heart attacks than more affluent people.

“The more we learn about these kinds of health care disparities, the quicker we can find solutions,” says outpatient pediatrics medical director Jarret Patton, M.D. That’s the goal of our Cultural Awareness Implementation Team, which is actively working on six projects to help ensure we provide the most appropriate care for people regardless of culture, race, ethnicity or socioeconomic status.

To help the team reach its goals, team members Patton and Cynthia Atamian, case manager with Lehigh Valley Physicians’ Practice, recently completed a year-long fellowship in cultural competency leadership. Working with a diverse group of hospitals nationwide, they heard from experts, participated in teleconferences and learned more about existing health care disparities.

“We were the first group to present at the fellowship,” Patton says. “We learned our network’s mix of projects is on target.”

The connections Patton and Atamian made through the fellowship are starting to pay dividends. Two national leaders in cultural awareness—Dennis Andrulis, M.D., from Drexel University’s Center for Health Equity and Robert Like, M.D., from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School’s cultural diversity center—joined our own expert, internal medicine chief Debbie Salas-Lopez, M.D., during a recent Cultural Awareness Implementation Team retreat.

Also, professionals from the Health Research and Educational Trust provided educational guidelines for the collection of patient race and ethnicity data, a project the team is developing to help us learn more about disparities in care—and how to correct them.

The team will use all this information as it helps us become more culturally aware and deliver the most appropriate care.

“In this country alone, people speak approximately 300 different languages,” Atamian says. “That’s why cultural awareness isn’t a luxury anymore. It’s a must if you’re dedicated to providing the right care for all.”

What’s Your Level of Cultural Awareness?
This summer, you’ll be asked to take a five-minute survey regarding your level of cultural awareness. Developed by two communications scholars and used by other organizations, the survey will be administered electronically through e-mail. There will be a paper version available for those without convenient computer access. “The results will help us create future education about cultural awareness,” says medical educator Jay Baglia, part of the group that tested the survey.

- Kyle Hardner

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