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STORY: Healing in Any Language
La Clinica, the West Side Community Health Service, has been addressing health disparities for over three decades. La Clinica was started by the Latino community in an effort to create a place where they could receive care consistent with their views and values. As new immigrant groups such as the Hmong arrived, they too found La Clinica to be a place they trust. Dr. Katherine Culhane-Pera discusses La Clinica's successes and challenges. She stresses the fact that although health care professionals can address health disparities by understanding their patients needs better, it is beyond their purview to address larger socio-economic injustices and the whole society needs to step up and address these issues.
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| Key Terms |
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| Health Disparities |
| Metro Area |
| Socio-economic Injustices |
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Click here to take a Survey
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| Before Viewing |
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What do you know about health disparities in the Twin Cities? Do all people who need health care have access to it?
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| After Viewing |
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- What are health disparities? Why are urban areas more affected by health disparities?
- Why was La Clinica created? How is it different from other clinics in serving its patients?
- What do La Clinica's professionals do to engage the Hmong community?
- How does transportation impact access to healthcare?
- What does Dr. Pera mean when she says, "the whole society needs to step up to address these issues"? Who do you think should be involved?
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| Suggested Activities and Resources: |
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The Right to an Adequate Standard of Living
This activity will introduce the right to an adequate standard of living and engage participants in discussion about what this right means in terms of health care and how our society meets or does not meet the needs of all people.
- Read to the participants or pass around handouts of this excerpt from Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
- Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the vent of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
- Divide participants into small groups and have them discuss Article 25 in light of what they have learned about health disparities. Discussion questions may include:
- How do health disparities prevent people from enjoying the right to an adequate standard of living?
- Why do you think "food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services" are grouped together in Article 25? Discuss the connection.
- Does the U.S. fulfill the right to an adequate standard of living?
- Discuss:
What did you already know about health disparities? What surprised you? What did you learn in this activity? Do you think everyone in your community has access to healthcare? Would you like it to be different?
- Discuss and debrief:
Have the groups report back to the larger group with their findings and conclusions.
Resources
Invite a representative from a community health organization to speak to the audience on issues of healthcare access. A timely topic might be access to healthcare in light of the relocation or shift in focus of major hospitals from core cities or first-ring suburbs to wealthier outer-ring suburbs and exurban areas.
Participants can review the Eliminating Health Disparities 2007 Legislative Report at
www.health.state.mn.us/ommh/legislativerpt2007.pdf
Other useful sites:
Twin Cities Compass www.tccompass.org
Mind the Gap Report www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/rc/reports/2005/10cities_sohmer/20051027_mindthegap.pdf
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