Advocates Meet with Lawmakers Today; Urge New Legislation to Address Health Care Disparities

ALBANY, NY (05/12/2010)(readMedia)-- Immigrants, African-Americans and other women of color, together with health and human service professionals from across New York State, today engaged in a one-day cultural competence and advocacy conference on health care for diverse communities. They shared their health care experiences with one another and with lawmakers in seeking remedies to decreasing health care disparities among diverse communities statewide.

They shared these startling statistics:

• African-American women are much more likely than others to face diabetes, heart disease and sexually transmitted infections.

• Hispanic women have the highest rates of new cases of cervical cancer and the second highest death rate from cervical cancer.

In meeting with lawmakers, advocates urged passage of:

• Cultural competence training for health care providers (S.1328B/A.5936B); and

• Medicaid funding for language interpretation services in health care settings (A.733A/S.3740B)

The Immigrant Women's Health Initiative of Family Planning Advocates of New York State hosted the event: Women's Health Matters: a Day of Cultural Competence Learning and Advocacy, which was tailored to immigrant, African-American and all women of color and health and human services providers in order to:

• Urge passage of legislation that will address health care disparities among immigrant, African-American, and other communities of color

• Help health and human services professionals build cultural competency skills and help patients acquire self advocacy skills for better health care outcomes.

Speaking from the physician's perspective, Planned Parenthood Federation of America's Vice President for Medical Affairs Dr. Vanessa Cullins said, "Much work is needed to effect health care training changes that will result in the vast majority of health care providers modeling client-centered communication that meets the needs of all clients regardless of race, ethnicity, language, or cultural origin. At Planned Parenthood, we believe in inclusion and diversity and the power and knowledge they confer."

"Immigrants, African-American and other women of color in this state experience lower quality health care because of a lack of communication between patients and providers," said Dr. Grace Mose, director of the Immigrant Women's Health Initiative of Family Planning Advocates of New York State. "This conference gave individual participants the necessary skills to advocate for legislative change and to reduce disparities in health care and other human services settings, well as the ability to apply these advocacy skills in any situation in their daily lives."

For more information on the Immigrant Women's Health Initiative, go to http://www.edfundfpa.org.