“The mission of People’s Center Health Services is to assure high quality and respectful health and medical care to all with a special focus on the needs of the economically disadvantaged and the socially disenfranchised.”
For more information about People's Center and to receive regular updates:
Sign up for our Email Newsletter
Find us on:
MetroDoctors Magazine
Sept/October 2010
Cultural Competence
People's Center Health Services Celebrates Diversity
Nestled in the heart of the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, People’s Center Health Services proudly specializes in providing affordable health care to patients of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds—and has for 40 years. As a Federally Qualified Health Center, People’s Center Health Services is able to address financial barriers to quality health care with our sliding fee scale program. Serving disadvantaged communities and helping patients overcome barriers has always been at the heart of our organization.
At People’s Center Health Services, no one is denied care due to lack of insurance or employment status. We offer care on a sliding fee scale based on family income and family size to those with no insurance or very high deductible. We accept most insurance plans, including those that are government-subsidized and if you don’t have insurance, our social service department can assist you in applying for the help you need.
People’s Center Health Services always strives to strengthen the cultural competency of our organization in order to best meet the expectations of all our patients and with 79 percent of patient visits from communities of color and 64 percent of visits from East African patients, this has been a top priority. This means opening our minds and hearts to the community we serve and investing in resources to create a welcoming environment that celebrates diversity.
Our quest to best serve our patient base began with our patients...we listened and reached out to them so we could partner and connect around health and wellness concerns. Our next step was to recruit and train personnel from the communities we served. Our goal was to develop a multi-lingual, multi-cultural staff so people from all over the world could relate to them and feel comfortable. As a result, our clinic currently has the in-house capacity to communicate in over ten languages to include Arabic and Farsi.
One notable example is Dr. Ahmed Mohamed, who joined People’s Center Health Services in 2008. His vast international medical experience and fluency in Somali, Arabic, Italian, and English, makes him a perfect fit for the diverse patient population in Cedar-Riverside and at People’s Center Health Services. Prior to working in the United States, Dr. Mohamed worked as a physician in hospitals and refugee camps in Somalia and Kenya. His passion to help people from all walks of life makes him a natural fit at People’s Center Health Services.
Our diverse team is a blessing, but it also means we have to work toward bridging in-house cultural divides amongst staff as well as between staff and patients. This is why People’s Center Health Services makes Diversity Training for all staff a priority. These frequent training sessions, with professional facilitators, help build a better understanding of cultural awareness and what “respect” and “unconditional positive regard” means among many different people. Ultimately, positive staff relations strengthen our awareness as compassionate and respectful care givers to our patients.
Because more than 50 percent of our patient visits are Somali immigrants, People’s Center Health Services offers several special programs targeted toward this group. Everyone is eligible to participate, and program participants include people with no Somali heritage. Examples are: the Somali Post Traumatic Stress Disease Program, Somali Diabetes Program, Somali Obesity Program, and Somali Hepatitis Program. In addition, we are developing a Somali Diabetes Education Video. Since the video will target the Somali population, we will use a Somali video production company and will produce three versions: one in Somali, one in Oromo, and one in English.
In addition to having a medical clinic that embraces culturally diverse needs, People’s Center Health Services prides itself on its Behavioral Health department. We understand the advantages of helping individuals, couples, and families address mental health needs through ongoing therapy with a licensed professional. Many of our patients are recent immigrants from East Africa. They have unique needs.
Thus, we have invested extra resources into developing a Post Traumatic Stress Disease Program to support their health and well-being. Most of our PTSD patients have experienced torture or exposure to torture as a result of civil war in countries from which they fled. In molding our program to fit these situations, our behavioral health staff has matched our PTSD program with the cultural beliefs and practices of our patient base. Our team is well versed in East African religions and culture and comfortable discussing traditional practices with PTSD clients. As part of this enhanced program, we have developed four major cultural competencies, which have resulted in high demand for PTSD clinic services:
- Knowledge of resettlement issues encountered by East African asylum seekers, who have fled civil war
- Cultural competence with traumatized people from East Africa
- Comprehension of personal torture and war trauma, as well as collective trauma experienced by this group
- Complex coordination with interpreters, who provide translation services to PTSD clients
Working with patients who have PTSD is a very individualized process. Each patient meets with a therapist/counselor and develops a care plan to address their unique circumstances to empower them to make small changes that will impact how they can better deal with their symptoms. There is a growing need for innovative approaches that address current gaps in services, increase access, and show promise in reducing the incidence and severity of symptoms in PTSD patients. This is a need People’s Center Health Services continuously works to fill.
When it comes time to sit down and review our demographic reports, statistics, and financials, we know what the numbers say about our patient population. But it is in the patient stories and interactions that we see the true impact of working toward a better understanding of our culturally diverse patient base.
One of our patients, Jama Saeed, a 67-year-old Somali man who was a successful merchant and businessman back home, made plans to flee Somalia after he lost everything in the war. Every month Jama meets with our clinical social worker. He sometimes cannot talk about his losses without crying. Instead, he prefers to reminisce about the world he knew before the conflict. Because the People’s Center Health Services clinical social worker lived in Africa during the ‘70s, they have many shared memories.
Directly after a follow-up PTSD visit, Jama said to the clinical social worker “I fear I will never again in my lifetime experience the dignity and beauty that once was my Africa, but visiting with you each month helps me remember, and for a short while, I am happy remembering the sweeter times.”
Our clinic experiences patient interactions like this on a daily basis and, ultimately, they fuel our passion and drive. Working to best serve our patients is a steady process of evaluation and self-awareness as an organization. It means conducting patient surveys, holding patient based focus groups, listening to the ideas of our community and staff, and always asking ourselves “How can we do better?” It requires a diverse, agile staff and a set of unique services that reflects the wants and needs of our patients—two key components that make People’s Center Health Services a medical home to thousands of patients.
