Perspectives of Community Partners Involved in an Academic Training to Address Clinicians' Implicit Bias.

Background: Community-academic partnerships are increasingly used in interventions to address health care disparities. Little is known about motivations and perceptions of participating community members.

Objectives: To elicit community members' perspectives of involvement in a community-academic partnership to address implicit bias in health care.

Using Simulation-Based Learning with Standardized Patients (SP) in an Implicit Bias Mitigation Clinician Training Program.

Objectives: To describe the development and refinement of an implicit bias recognition and management training program for clinical trainees.

Methods: In the context of an NIH-funded clinical trial to address healthcare disparities in hypertension management, research and education faculty at an academic medical center used a participatory action research approach to engage local community members to develop and refine a "knowledge, awareness, and skill-building" bias recognition and mitigation program. The program targeted medical residents and Doctor of Nursing Practice students.

COmmuNity-engaged SimULation Training for Blood Pressure Control (CONSULT-BP): A study protocol.

Background: Healthcare professionals have negative implicit biases toward minority and poor patients. Few communication skills interventions target implicit bias as a factor contributing to disparities in health outcomes. We report the protocol from the COmmuNity-engaged SimULation Training for Blood Pressure Control (CONSULT-BP), a trial evaluating a novel educational and training intervention targeting graduate medical and nursing trainees that is designed to mitigate the effects of implicit bias in clinical encounters.

Community Health Worker Integration in Health Care, Public Health, and Policy: A Partnership Model.

Health care systems and public health agencies are focusing increased attention on the capacity of community health workers (CHWs) to improve health outcomes for vulnerable populations and to support integration of clinical and community prevention services. This article describes 3 initiatives in Massachusetts in which the state public health department has collaborated with CHW leaders, health providers, and community-based partners to develop innovative policy and services, including state certification of CHWs, integrated chronic disease programs, and a state-funded pilot program to demonstrate return on investment for community-based prevention. Concluding lessons are relevant for implementation of health care reform nation-wide.

Brave new world: mental health experiences of Puerto Ricans, immigrant Latinos, and Brazilians in Massachusetts.

Depression and anxiety are of the most commonly occurring mental health disorders in the United States. Despite a variety of efficacious interventions for depression and anxiety, it is clear that ethnic minorities experience mental health care disparities in their access to mental health services and the quality of treatment they receive. Research indicates that Latino heterogeneity impacts access to depression and anxiety treatment.

Navigation and palliative care.

Patient navigation represents an opportunity to further the integration of palliative care with standard cancer care. This article defines palliative and hospice care and describes some of the current challenges of integrating palliative care into other forms of care. It also considers outcomes that navigation might be expected to improve for patients receiving palliative care or enrolled in hospice.

The Latino mental health project: a local mental health needs assessment.

In this article, we present the results of a local needs assessment of the mental health experiences, service needs, and barriers to treatment-seeking of the Latino population in Worcester, Massachusetts. Overall, participants reported relatively high rates of experiences with symptoms of mental health problems, they indicated using a range of both formal and alternative mental health services, and they noted a variety of instrumental, attitudinal, and culturally-specific barriers to seeking mental health services. Findings are discussed with regards to the role that community-driven research can play in advancing efforts to provide relevant services to underserved populations.