RE: Provider's Guide to Quality and Cul ture

[Guest guest]

FYI

Dear Colleagues:

We are pleased to announce some major enhancements to The Provider's Guide

to Quality and Culture. Enhancements include: (1) full-color photographs,

(2) improved navigation and visual appeal, (3) enhanced information on 5

major cultural groups in the US with pertinent links to related information

in other parts of the site, (4) excerpts from selected chapters of the 10

volume Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA),

Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the United States

Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Office of Minority Health

(OMH) cultural competence monograph series presented in short pieces of text

for easy on-screen reading with full references for all of the material, (5)

additional resources and links and (6) a fully-functional search engine. In

essence, the amount of information contained in the Guide has doubled since

its release in June.

The Guide is emerging as the " one stop shopping resource " in the United

States for health professionals seeking resources on cultural issues within

the context of quality of care. The Guide emerged out of the Quality Center

of the Bureau of Primary Health Care at the Health Resources and Services

Administration which perceives cultural competence as a major quality of

care issue. The Guide responds to 4 of the 6 national aims articulated by

the National Institute of Medicine's (IOM) Crossing the Quality Chasm report

(Safety, Effectiveness, Patient-centeredness and Equity).

The Provider's Guide was developed by Management Sciences for Health, a

nonprofit organization dedicated to the improvement of global health. HRSA

and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have

recently signed an interagency agreement to add, in FY 2002, streaming

videos (with CD-ROM support) portraying clinical case scenarios of

culturally appropriate patient encounters. We look forward to your comments

on all of the above, and on the site as a whole.

To access The Provider's Guide to Quality and Culture, go to

http://erc.msh.org/quality & culture.

Leonard G. Epstein, M.S.W.

Senior Advisor on Quality and Culture

The Quality Center

Bureau of Primary Health Care/HRSA

4350 East-West Highway, 11-9C2

Bethesda, MD 20814

v (301) 594-3803

f (301) 594-5224

lepstein@...

http://bphc.hrsa.gov/quality