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Culture Matters Overview
What is Culture Matters
Culture Matters is an on-going program through the Office of Minority Health. Many
thanks to those practices who participated in the HSAG Culture Matters initiative.
Culture Matters is an initiative launched in 2006 by Health Services Advisory
Group (HSAG), Arizona's Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO), designed
to eliminate health care disparities by
helping primary care providers serving Medicare beneficiaries to assess and improve
their skills in providing culturally
and linguistically competent care for a diverse and ever-changing Arizona
population.
The Institute of Medicine’s 2002 report, Unequal Treament: Confronting Racial and
Ethnic Disparities in Health Care, states that disparities in health care
"are found even when clinical factors, such as stage of disease presentation, co-morbidities,
age and even severity of disease are taken into account".
According to national experts, health providers can focus on two key areas to help
eliminate disparities:
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Increase health care providers’ awareness of disparities
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Integrate cross-cultural communication into the training of all current and future
health professionals
- According to the US Census Bureau, in 1995, racial and ethnic minorities made up
30 percent of the Arizona’s population and are expected to increase to 42 percent
by 2025.
- According to the
2000 US Census, some 1.2 million Arizonans reported speaking a language than
English at home.
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For more information, contact:
Barbara Warren,
Director, Health Communications
602-665-6113
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CMS developing and implementing pay for performance program, the Physician Quality
Reporting initiative, scheduled to launch in July 2007. |
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