Assessment Tools

Self-assessment for health practitioners developed at the request of the HRSA Bureau of Primary Health Care. Assesses both organizational and individual cultural competence in six domains: Values and Belief Systems, Cultural Aspects of Epidemiology, Clinical Decision-Making, Life Cycle Events, Cross-Cultural Communication, and empowerment/Health Management.)

Self-assessment for health practitioners developed at the request of the HRSA Bureau of Primary Health Care. Assesses both organizational and individual cultural competence in six domains: Values and Belief Systems, Cultural Aspects of Epidemiology, Clinical Decision-Making, Life Cycle Events, Cross-Cultural Communication, and empowerment/Health Management.

A model of a Hispanic Needs Assessment, this report “seeks to examine the health status and health needs of the Latino population, as well as determine what the health care provider community requires in order to improve the capability of local organizations and agencies to address Latino health needs. In addition to reporting on the results of the survey and key informant interviews, the report analyzes the data and provides recommendations for capacity building, grantmaking, and policy improvement opportunities. This report is designed to determine optimal methods of building the infrastructure necessary to serve diverse populations, with an eye on the needs of the Ventura County Latino community.”

This report presents the results of the project Developing a Self-Assessment Tool for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Local Public Health Agencies, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (DHHS) Office of Minority Health (OMH). The project’s objective was to construct an organizational self-assessment tool for Local Public Health Agencies (LPHAs) that offers sound measures of culturally and linguistically appropriate services (CLAS)

Working with the California Endowment, National Initiative for Children’s Healthcare Quality (NICHQ) is developing a structured process to translate the abstract knowledge in the field of cultural competency into a package that can be used to drive change in clinical practice first in California and then throughout the nation.

This checklist is intended to heighten the awareness and sensitivity of personnel to the importance of cultural and linguistic cultural competence in health and human service settings. It provides concrete examples of the kinds of beliefs, attitudes, values and practices which foster cultural and linguistic competence at the individual or practitioner level.

Will Eliminate 2 State Agencies and 19 Boards and Commissions; Merge 7 Agencies and 23 Boards and Commissions Into Others ~ Initial Estimates Find Reforms will Save at least $2 Million a Year~

The Short Assessment of Health Literacy for Spanish-speaking Adults (SAHLSA) is a health literacy test for the Spanish-speaking population. Its development is validated in the PubMed abstract, with a more comprehensive explanation presented in the Academy Health PowerPoint.
Development of an Easy-to-Use Spanish Health Literacy Assessment Tool

America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) toolkit developed to expand the general knowledge about the issues surrounding data collection and its potential impact for identifying disparities and measuring quality improvement. This document not only provides a rationale for the importance of collecting and analyzing data on race, ethnicity, and primary language, but also described how to do so and gives examples of innovative strategies and models being implemented by health insurance plans.

AHRQ Activities to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Care

This program brief provides a summary, by topic, of ongoing and recently completed AHRQ activities that specifically address the health of the AI/AN people.

The Cultural Competency Assessment Scale Developed in June 2004, this scale is applicable to an agency delivering behavioral health care in an outpatient treatment environment. Implementation of Cultural Competency (CC) by the agency is expected to promote CC in all its staff members and to create a milieu that acts to improve access and retention in treatment of persons from diverse cultural groups

New Surveys Evaluate Culturally Competent and Health Literate Care A series of new AHRQ-funded studies focus on the development and evaluation of new questions, or “item sets,” that have been added to the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS(r)) surveys to assess culturally competent and health literate care. The goal of the CAHPS surveys is to provide patients with a way of reporting on their experiences with health care services. These surveys go beyond standard patient satisfaction ratings by asking patients to provide specific and actionable feedback. The CAHPS Cultural Competence item set was developed to measure whether care is provided in a culturally and linguistically appropriate manner. Patients are asked to share their experiences on issues such as language access, trust, complementary and alternative medicine, communication, and discrimination. Other studies cover the development and evaluation of two supplemental CAHPS item sets – one for the Clinician/Group CAHPS and one for Hospital CAHPS – that evaluate how well providers address health literacy. Both supplements to the Clinician/Group CAHPS have been endorsed by the National Quality Forum. The studies were published August 16 in a special supplement to *Medical Care

SAMPLE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS TO GUAGE CULTURAL AND LINGUISTIC COMPETENCE Use these sample questions to build interviews that help assess a job candidate’s knowledge and skills related to cultural competence. The questions have not been tested, nor does use of these questions guarantee a candidate is knowledgeable or skilled related to an organization’s specific cultural competency goals

Tool for Assessing Cultural Competence Training (TACCT) With increasing diversity in the U.S. population and strong evidence of disparities in health care, it is critically important that health care professionals are specifically educated on how their own and their patients’ demographic (e.g., gender, income, race and ethnicity, etc.) and cultural (e.g., language, religion, etc.) factors influence health, health care delivery and health behaviors. In 2000, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) introduced two standards about cultural competence that inspired medical schools to introduce cultural competence education into the undergraduate curriculum. TACCT will help in that effort. TACCT is a self-administered assessment tool that can be used by medical schools to examine all components of the entire medical school curriculum. TACCT enables schools to identify gaps and redundancies in their curricula, which will enable schools to make the best use of opportunities and resources. The TACCT can be used for both traditional and problem-based curricula.

CLAS Technical Assistance Evaluation Tool