Maine's Offices of Minority Health and Maternal and Child Health Discover Common Ground Through Collaboration and Partnership with the Community
Maternal and Child Health
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Dr. Richard Aronson, Medical Director, Office of Maternal and Child Health, Augusta, ME |
In August 1935. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law new legislation to promote and improve maternal and child health nation-wide. Title V (MCH) of the Social Security Act was born, creating an Office of Maternal and Child Health in every state in the Union. Seventy-two years later, Title V remains the longest lasting public health legislation in our Nation's history.
The Federal Maternal Child Health Bureau requires each state's Title V agency to conduct a statewide needs assessment every five years. In 2003, as the Maine Title V Program planned for its 2005 review, Dr. Richard Aronson, the State's MCH Medical Director, in partnership with Title V Director Valerie Ricker, MSN, MS, sought a more creative and innovative design to discover how the people Maine of viewed these services. They decided to systematically include the identification of strengths in the needs assessment, and to collect qualitative as well as quantitative data to determine Maine's MCH priorities for 2005-2010.
Dr. Aronson is a long time leader and advocate for, and practitioner of, family-centered care, community-wide leadership, health promotion and resiliency, outreach and needs assessment, and cultural and linguistic competence. True to his beliefs, he and Ms. Ricker organized forums that they called dialogues throughout the state of Maine; they hired external, neutral facilitators to conduct dialogues that included youth and families. They looked forward to getting suggestions for improvement in MCH systems as well as learning more about the strengths of systems and services.
Representatives of a variety of MCH stakeholders participated. Among the community and family representatives were people who had arrived in Maine recently, such as the Somalis in Lewiston. Other communities, such as the Native American tribes, who had lived in Maine far longer than any other group, have responded. From these dialogues held throughout the state, the MCH Program identified the need for cultural and linguistic competence as one of its top priorities for 2005-2010.
Participants expressed a desire to work with the State MCH Agency on health disparities and inequalities affecting the MCH population. It also became evident that families and other stakeholders wanted Title V to use clearer, less bureaucratic, and less technical language that all people could share and understand.
The idea that Maine had cultural and linguistic competency issues was a new one for many health care providers. Five years ago the state of Maine was the most racially homogenous state in the union. Until the mid 1990s, Portland's population was overwhelmingly white and Christian. But now, the northeastern tip of New England is home to immigrants from scores of ethnic groups from around the globe, many of who are refugees from war torn countries. For example, today in Portland High School, you can hear more than 25 different languages!
And then Maine's Office of Minority Health was created in 2005!
Dr. Aronson ventured, "We all have our own cultures, and our own biases. The challenge is for us to join together, in a spirit of discovering common ground and honoring diversity, embracing all cultures with unbiased language to create a myriad of new and previously unlikely partnerships throughout the state."
Dr. Aronson and Ms. Lisa Sockabasin, the Director of Maine's Office of Minority Health, have joined together in a powerful effort to move Maine forward in its practice of cultural and linguistic competence. An initiative called Safe Families Maine, funded by the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP) and led by Sharon Leahy-Lind, the Director of Women's Health, is one of several Maine initiatives that seek to foster and sustain humane, family-centered, community-rooted, culturally proficient, and strength-based systems for children, youth, and families.
Office of Minority Health
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS) created the Office of Minority Health (OMH) in 1986, in response to the large and persistent gaps in health status among Americans of different racial and ethnic groups. The mission of the office is "to improve and protect the health of racial and ethnic minority populations through the development of health policies and programs that will eliminate health disparities." The office advises the Secretary of DHSS on public health program activities affecting American Indians, Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Native Hawaiians, and other Pacific Islanders. For more information, see www.omhrc.gov
Many states have their own Offices of Minority Health, which operate with a combination of state and federal funding. The Federal OMH works with established state offices of minority and multicultural health, and provides technical assistance, as requested, to minority community groups who are working to establish similar entities within their states.
In April 2005, Maine hosted the biannual "Eliminating Health Disparities Conference and Institute," where Governor John Baldacci announced the formation of Maine's Office of Minority Health.
Maine's Office of Minority Health promotes health and wellness in Maine's racial and ethnic minority communities. Areas of priority include:
- Cultural and Linguistic Competence: to address cultural and linguistic barriers to accessing all health services resulting in improved systems that are both culturally and linguistically competent.
- Data Collection: to enhance data systems and improve the collection of racial and ethnic data in order to better understand and identify existing health disparities. This is especially important as Maine's population becomes more diverse with the increasing resettlement of refugees.
- Partnerships and Collaboration: to inform, advise, and assist in prioritizing actions to efficiently and effectively address racial and ethnic health disparities.