This book proposes an innovative new model for transforming racial and cultural lines in health and social care through communication processes, and introduces listening partnerships as a cost-effective, sustainable intervention to improve communication skills. Transforming Racial and Cultural Lines in Health and Social Care walks the reader through the process of developing the essential skills for racially and culturally effective and compassionate communication. Divided into four parts, the book includes examples that highlight the significance of each skill and provides listening partnerships on each topic. In the final part of the book, Froehlich and Thornton-Marsh interview medical, health, and social care practitioners regarding their experiences in using racially and culturally effective communication to transform health and social care. Improved communication enhances the experience of health and social care for both patients and practitioners and ultimately supports better health outcomes. Transforming Racial and Cultural Lines in Health and Social Care is essential reading for health and social care students looking to improve their communication skills and provide better care.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Racial and ethnic disparities in health care are known to reflect access to care and other issues that arise from differing socioeconomic conditions. There is, however, increasing evidence that even after such differences are accounted for, race and ethnicity remain significant predictors of the quality of health care received. In Unequal Treatment, a panel of experts documents this evidence and explores how persons of color experience the health care environment. The book examines how disparities in treatment may arise in health care systems and looks at aspects of the clinical encounter that may contribute to such disparities. Patients' and providers' attitudes, expectations, and behavior are analyzed. How to intervene? Unequal Treatment offers recommendations for improvements in medical care financing, allocation of care, availability of language translation, community-based care, and other arenas. The committee highlights the potential of cross-cultural education to improve provider-patient communication and offers a detailed look at how to integrate cross-cultural learning within the health professions. The book concludes with recommendations for data collection and research initiatives. Unequal Treatment will be vitally important to health care policymakers, administrators, providers, educators, and students as well as advocates for people of color.

As the population of older Americans grows, it is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. Differences in health by racial and ethnic status could be increasingly consequential for health policy and programs. Such differences are not simply a matter of education or ability to pay for health care. For instance, Asian Americans and Hispanics appear to be in better health, on a number of indicators, than White Americans, despite, on average, lower socioeconomic status. The reasons are complex, including possible roles for such factors as selective migration, risk behaviors, exposure to various stressors, patient attitudes, and geographic variation in health care. This volume, produced by a multidisciplinary panel, considers such possible explanations for racial and ethnic health differentials within an integrated framework. It provides a concise summary of available research and lays out a research agenda to address the many uncertainties in current knowledge. It recommends, for instance, looking at health differentials across the life course and deciphering the links between factors presumably producing differentials and biopsychosocial mechanisms that lead to impaired health.

The decade ahead will test the nation's nearly 4 million nurses in new and complex ways. Nurses live and work at the intersection of health, education, and communities. Nurses work in a wide array of settings and practice at a range of professional levels. They are often the first and most frequent line of contact with people of all backgrounds and experiences seeking care and they represent the largest of the health care professions. A nation cannot fully thrive until everyone - no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they make - can live their healthiest possible life, and helping people live their healthiest life is and has always been the essential role of nurses. Nurses have a critical role to play in achieving the goal of health equity, but they need robust education, supportive work environments, and autonomy. Accordingly, at the request of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, on behalf of the National Academy of Medicine, an ad hoc committee under the auspices of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conducted a study aimed at envisioning and charting a path forward for the nursing profession to help reduce inequities in people's ability to achieve their full health potential. The ultimate goal is the achievement of health equity in the United States built on strengthened nursing capacity and expertise. By leveraging these attributes, nursing will help to create and contribute comprehensively to equitable public health and health care systems that are designed to work for everyone. The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity explores how nurses can work to reduce health disparities and promote equity, while keeping costs at bay, utilizing technology, and maintaining patient and family-focused care into 2030. This work builds on the foundation set out by The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health (2011) report.

Social workers today not only face competing claims concerning the rights and needs of children and youth, but they also confront contradictions between policy and practice. Social workers are expected to fight for the best interests of the child, even though financial support for children's welfare and education grows scarce. They are asked to save "children at risk," while, at the same time, they are urged to protect communities from "risky children"; and they are encouraged to "leave no child behind," while also implementing "zero tolerance" policies to keep educational environments free from troubled youth. A cutting-edge text that deals directly with the confusion and complexity of modern child welfare, Childhood, Youth, and Social Work in Transformation features contributions from a truly interdisciplinary group of practitioners, scholars, and activists. Examining the theoretical, political, and practical aspects of working with youth today, this volume breaks free from existing modes of thought and strategies of practice and prompts readers to critically reflect on accepted approaches and new possibilities of action. Contributors analyze how economic, political, and cultural changes over the last several decades have reshaped the experiences and representations of children and youth in the United States. They examine conceptions of troubled children and youth in contemporary policies and programs and assess why certain discourses about troubling youth are so compelling to professionals, policymakers, and the public. In conclusion, these skilled professionals explore the reinvention of social work policy and practice, including the need to forge relationships that respect the experiences, rights, and personhood of children and youth.

Reveals the history of the individuals who worked to make psychiatry more available to Harlem's black community in the early Civil Rights Era. Toward the middle of the twentieth century, African Americans in New York City began to receive increased access to mental health care in some facilities within the city's mental health system. This study documents how and why this important change in public health-and in public opinion on race-occurred. Drawing on records from New York's children's courts, Harlem's public schools, Columbia University, and the Department of Hospitals, Dennis Doyle tells here the story of the American psychiatrists and civil servants who helped codify in New York's mental health policies the view that blacks and whites are psychological equals. The book examines in particular the events through which these racial liberals working in Harlem gained a foothold within New York's public institutions, creating inclusive public policies and ostensibly race-neutral standards of care. Psychiatry and Racial Liberalism in Harlem, 1936-1968 not only contributes to the growing body of historiography on race and medical institutions in the civil rights era but, more importantly, shows how inveterate racial prejudices within public policy can be overcome. Dennis A. Doyle is assistant professor of history at the Saint Louis College of Pharmacy.

Winner of the 1983 Pulitzer Prize and the Bancroft Prize in American History, this is a landmark history of how the entire American health care system of doctors, hospitals, health plans, and government programs has evolved over the last two centuries. "The definitive social history of the medical profession in America....A monumental achievement."—H. Jack Geiger, M.D., New York Times Book Review

Through the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, Islam in America underwent a dramatic transformation. In the city of Chicago, African American and immigrant Muslims increasingly came into contact and collaboration with each other. Aided by shifts in American foreign and domestic policies, and the increasing interconnectivity of Arab states with American Muslims, the character and scope of community development and religious practice changed under the leadership of a new generation of American Muslims. Envisioning themselves as part of a single “ummah,” leaders of various Muslim communities worked to build understanding, consolidate organizations, and share time and space with their co-religionists. Through their actions, racial, cultural, linguistic, and ideological barriers were no longer be irreconcilable differences. Utilizing documents from groups like the MCC, MSA, and NOI, this book emphasizes the on-the-ground actions of Chicago-based Muslims in reimagining and building the ummah in America. In doing so, Chicago Muslims and the Transformation of American Islam offers a new approach to understanding the complex and oft-disparate stories of American Muslim life during this era.