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Check It Out: A Rich Source of Video
Looking for cross cultural care videos to educate both you and your patients? Take a look at the New Routes to Community Health video library, available here. You'll find numerous short pieces for recent immigrants, in Cambodian, Hmong, Lao, Vietnamese, Somali, Russian and Spanish, plus a host of other languages. Topics range from sexually transmitted disease to a discussion on why Somali men take their coffee with double cream and double sugar.

New Routes is a Madison, Wisconsin-based group that works to improve the health of immigrants through immigrant-created media. In addition to a Minneapolis/St. Paul collaborative, New Routes works with immigrant groups in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Learn to Apply Health Literacy Principles
Get free training on use of health literacy self-assessment tools to improve primary care quality during a Diversity Rx webinar, scheduled for 2-3:15 p.m., Thur., Feb. 4.

People need to understand health information to make informed decisions about their care. Learn how you can help by learning how to identify areas of your primary care practice that need improvement. In this webinar, nationally recognized experts will walk you through using a new health literacy practice assessment tool, and discuss a pediatric practice’s experience in using the tool.

Presenters include Cindy Brach, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Dr. Darren DeWalt, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dr. Laura Noonan, Levine Children’s Hospital at Carolinas Medical.

Get more details.
Reserve your Webinar seat.

Join the Refugee Health Resources Group
The Refugee Healing Resources Group meets monthly to discuss the psychological, emotional and spiritual healing needs of refugee and immigrant populations in the metro area. This multicultural group includes mental health, social service and health care professionals, community healers, religious leaders; and anyone else interested in improved access to psychological, emotional and spiritual healing

Meetings are held the third Tuesday of each month, 3-5 p.m.at the Minnesota Church Center, 122 West Franklin Ave., Minneapolis. For more information, contact Sue Johnston via email, or call 612-230-3213. The discussion topic at the Jan. 19 meeting will be psychological trauma, post-traumatic stress disorder and somatic modalities of healing.

Get Emergency Info in ASL, Braille
Help special needs patients be prepared for emergencies with video and downloadable print information from the Northeast Texas Public Health District, available for free use at this link. ASL interperters present information on food safety, flooding, storms, infectious disease, basic first aid and general emergency preparation.The videos include an English language voice over, plus text. Also available are Braille formatted and large print emergency preparedness documents.

Learn about Health Reform, Disparities
The major health reform bills now pending before Congress include provisions that could help or hinder efforts to reduce disparities affecting racial and ethnic minorities. Racial and ethnic minorities represent only one-third of the total U.S. population, but comprise more than half of the nation’s uninsured.

A new Kaiser Family Foundation brief examines key provisions of health reform legislation, such as Medicaid expansions, insurance exchanges, community health centers and more, that are likely to affect health disparities. Learn more by downloading the brief, Health Reform and Communities of Color: How might it Affect Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities?

Get the Word on Language Access
Amid growing concerns about racial, ethnic and language disparities in health care, the Joint Commission and the federal government's Office for Civil Rights have released Improving Patient-Provider Communication, a video on language access in health care organizations.

The video identifies tools that health care organizations can use to build effective language access programs. It also addresses the obligations of health care organizations concerning translation of written documents. Watch the video here.

Easy Access to H1N1 Videos
Find simple H1N1 influenza videos from Minnesota's Emergency and Community Health Outreach (ECHO) here. The short clips include these titles: Stay at Home, Vaccination Priority Groups, Hand Washing, and Get Your Shot. They're available in Arabic, English, Hmong, Karen, Khmer, Lao, Oromo, Russian, Somali, Spanish and Vietnamese.

Free Cultural Competence Training Tools
Free courses with CME, CE or CNE creit for physicians & pharmacists sponsored by the US Office of Minority Health (OMH) offer the latest resources and tools to promote cultural competency in health care.
They include A Physician's Practical Guide to Culturally Competent Care,; Culturally Competent Nursing Care: A Cornerstone of Caring. Learn more here.