Why Culture Matters for a Healthier Minnesota

Making better connections with multicultural health plan members and patients.

Perspective from Nancy J. Feldman, Stratis Health Board member

Many of you know the statistics. The Minnesota State Demographic Center projects the state’s multicultural population to increase from 14 percent in 2005 to 25 percent in 2035. In the Twin Cities metropolitan area, the impact will be even greater, with the non-white population accounting for 35 percent of the population, compared with only 20 percent in 2005.

While Minnesota is consistently ranked as one of the healthiest states in the nation, a deeper look shows that Minnesotans of color lag behind the state’s majority community in health outcomes. New immigrants may not speak or understand English, be accustomed to Western medical practices, or trust our health care system. Health care providers are equally challenged by language and cultural barriers. Ultimately, the breakdown in communication can lead to disparities in health care access and outcomes.

We in the health care community need to make better connections with our multicultural health plan members and patients to find better ways to “speak your language.” It’s incumbent on us to accelerate our efforts to reduce disparities. I believe all health plans and health care providers should make cultural competency a top priority. Indeed, it should be viewed as a core ingredient to our success.

When we say UCare is “health care that starts with you” to our more than 180,000 members, we include every single member, no matter his or her race or ethnic background. Implied in our member-focused promise is that we will strive for a deeper understanding of our members to more effectively meet their health care needs.

For 25 years, UCare has made cultural competency an organization-wide mandate. We have established a Diversity and Cultural Competency Council to oversee these activities. We are proud of our long history of innovation in this area, including:

• Winning the Ellis J. Bonner Community Leadership Award for our Hmong Outreach Program, aimed at bridging the cultural gap separating the Hmong population and US health care practitioners.
• Creating a cultural competency chapter for our provider manual.
• Integrating the cultural needs of our members into our daily activity, such as providing the Community Family Doula Program to pregnant members from many cultures (Latino, American Indian, African-born, and teens).
• Being a founding partner of the Multilingual Health Resource Exchange, a Web-based clearinghouse of health materials in different languages.
• Funding and collaborating on Stratis Health’s groundbreaking Minnesota online cultural competency learning center for health care practitioners, Culture Care Connection.
• Providing the UCare Fund and community benefit grants across the state to community, clinic, and research programs designed to reduce disparities in care.
  

Becoming more culturally competent can be enormously gratifying. Making new connections with our members and patients can be rewarding. Providers experience success when patients fully understand diagnosis or treatment options. By the same token, health plan customer service staff are successful when members who call can truly understand the explanation of how their health care benefits work.

All of us in the health care community share a common goal to improve health outcomes among emerging populations, as well as all populations, in Minnesota. I’m confident we can make it happen … through the hard work of improving our understanding of these communities and learning new and meaningful ways to communicate with them. I think we’d all agree that an initiative that improves health outcomes is priceless.

Nancy J. Feldman, is a member of the Stratis Health Board of Directors. She is president and CEO of UCare, a health plan long known for its work with diverse and underserved populations.