Assignment: Personal Health Decisions
If, after completing the four-factor analysis, a recipient determines that it should provide language assistance services, a recipient may develop an implementation plan to address the identified needs of the LEP populations it serves. Recipients have considerable flexibility in developing this plan. The guidance provides five steps that may be helpful in designing such a plan: (1) identifying LEP individuals who need language assistance; (2) language assistance measures (such as how staff can obtain services or respond to LEP callers); (3) training staff; (4) providing notice to LEP persons (such as posting signs); and (5) monitoring and updating the LEP plan (USHHS, Office for Civil Rights, n.d.).
Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) In compliance with Title VI and the LEP regulations, the HHS Office of Minority Health (OMH) has developed “ National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services in Health Care (CLAS).” In promulgating these standards, OMH provided its rationale for preparing the standards and recommendations for their use. The CLAS standards are intended to advance health equity, improve quality, and help eliminate health care disparities by providing a blueprint for individuals and health and health care organizations to implement culturally and linguistically appropriate services. Adoption of these standards is expected to help advance better health and health care in the United States. The CLAS standards are listed in Table 1.2.
It is worth noting that both federal and state governments have begun addressing the need for cultural competence through various standards and legislation. States are requiring cultural competence education in medical and nursing schools, and legislation in many states includes requiring cultural competence training for health care providers to receive licen-sure or relicensure. Figure 1.6 highlights the states that are proposing to implement cultural competence training.
TABLE 1.2 National CLAS Standards
Source: USHHS, Office of Minority Health (n.d.).
FIGURE 1.6 Map of states with cultural competence legislation.
Personal Health Decisions Perhaps the area where law and cultural health issues intersect the most is in the area of personal health care decisions. How an individual approaches health care decisions is informed by his or her
personal experiences as well as family, religious, and cultural influences. Different cultures approach how to undergo treatment, when to treat, and when to stop treatment differently. Even more important, who will make such decisions for a patient may differ from culture to culture.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.