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Culture, Ethnicity & Health Care SIG

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SIG Description

Continuing the tradition of its founders, the focus of our SIG is on research, education, and policy/advocacy about cultural issues (including race/ethnicity and linguistic issues), and how these issues impact children's health and healthcare.

Mission/Goals

Bring together pediatricians from across the country and create a community of people with shared interests in culture, ethnicity, and healthcare.
Define a set of urgent priorities and unanswered questions regarding cultural, ethnic, and linguistic issues in children's health and healthcare
Identify potential projects for the group to work on together focusing on cultural/linguistic issues in the areas of research, education, and policy/advocacy

April 2012 Newsletter Article

This year in Boston we will have the first ever combined meeting of the Serving the Underserved and Culture, Ethnicity, and Healthcare SIGs on Monday, April 30, 8:30-11:30 am. We will focus on the intersection between the two SIGs. During this session, we will hear expert perspectives on the changing health care system and how this will affect underserved populations. Specifically, we will focus on the medical home and on opportunities to reduce health disparities. Speakers include Dr. Lisa Simpson, President and CEO of Academy Health, and Elmer Freeman, Executive Director of CCHERS and Director of Urban Health Programs at Northeastern University. It is also time to think about electing new co-chairs! Our SIG meeting will conclude with a discussion of the election process and co-chair nominations.

On Tuesday, May 1, 8:30-10:30 am, join us for a special workshop on Caring for a Culturally Diverse Society: Understanding the Impact of Changing Demographics on the Care We Provide. The workshop is led by one of our SIG members and past SIG meeting presenter, Naomi Steiner, and your Co-Chairs, Darcy Thompson and Rashmi Shetgiri. Learn about the evolution of demographics in the United States and the most current research on how this affects pediatric practice. The discussion will cover how the immigrant population faces unique challenges such as learning English as a second language, an educational system unprepared for their needs, cultural adaptation issues, and major access barriers to health care. We will focus on major barriers for pediatricians to support these families such as lack of educational materials or curricula for trainees, paucity of resources available to clinicians to support families, and gaps in current research needed to develop guidelines.

Please join us for these informative and engaging sessions!

SIG Co-Chairs:
Rashmi Shetgiri
rashmi.shetgiri@utsouthwestern.edu

Darcy Thompson
dthomp46@jhmi.edu

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Past Meeting:

PAS 2010 Vancouver
Annual Meeting of the SIG Culture Ethnicity and Healthcare
Tuesday May 4th 845-1145AM

We are very excited about our plans for this year's annual meeting in Vancouver. We have invited a national expert in bilingualism - Dr. Naomi Steiner - to join us for a discussion on this topic.

Around 20%of children in the US are growing up bilingual. Pediatricians today must be equipped to care for these children. We hope you will join us for an interactive and lively discussion on how children learn two languages led by Dr. Steiner, author of 7 Steps to Raising a Bilingual Child.

We will address such questions as:

What is the impact of bilingualism on a child's development?
How should we respond when a child from a bilingual home has language delay?
How can parents and pediatricians support bilingualism?

This is an important topic for current and future providers for children growing up in non-English primary language households or in families that seek opportunities for learning new languages.

Bring your own questions.

After, we will have a group discussion to set our SIG annual agenda. Check back for more details.

Our last 2009 SIG meeting, at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting in Baltimore, consisted of a great presentation on cultural competency training followed by presentations of a variety of abstracts on cultural issues. We also continued our annual discussion about developing a collaborative project.

Additionally, during this past year, new Co-chairs for the SIG were selected. Dr. Rashmi Shetgiri is an Instructor of Pediatrics at UT Southwestern. Her work is focused on Latino child health, health disparities, and youth violence prevention. Dr. Darcy Thompson is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Johns Hopkins. Her work is focused on improving the health of Latino children with particular interests in obesity, health education, and resident training.