Healthy Impact!

Project Snapshot
A partnership between Rocky Mountain Public Broadcasting, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Colorado Foundation for Medical Care

Rocky Mountain PBS, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Colorado Foundation for Medical Care collaborated on a two-year awareness campaign exploring cultural misunderstandings that posed barriers to physical and mental health care for vulnerable populations in Colorado. The project distributed a booklet denouncing hate messages and openly discussing prejudice in the community. Public TV PSAs featured doctors, nurses, police, and clergy encouraging non-English speakers to ask for an interpreter when needed at clinics, schools, and churches. A teleconference summit concluded the project.

Healthy Impact! Boosts Cultural Competence

“Eureka!” That’s Rocky Mountain speak for “We’ve discovered how to get it done.”

Healthy Impact! has reached that Eureka moment of empowerment in managing to energize players on both sides of the cultural competence in health care equation.

This Denver, Colorado initiative has reduced the barriers immigrants face in accessing health care by helping newcomers develop skills in managing their own health care needs. At the same time, the program has made policy and training inroads that are raising the level of culturally competent care provided by health practitioners.

Project partners Rocky Mountain Public Broadcasting, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Colorado Foundation for Medical Care were lucky to have Susan Thornton as their project director. She’s a person used to getting things done after 16 years on the Littleton, Colorado City Council, including eight years as mayor. Thornton assembled an impressive advisory committee to raise awareness about health disparities between cultural groups. At the end of a year’s study, they issued a series of recommendations, some aimed at the legislature, others toward health educators. In an effort to make a system-wide change, Healthy Impact! study results were used to produce a CD which was distributed statewide to physicians, encouraging them to take a free, online cultural competency course. Thornton is proud of their result. “We featured local opinion leaders on the CD, emphasizing why doctors should take the course. As an incentive, we got continuing education credits for the class, too,” she says.

An even more substantial incentive was that Healthy Impact! collaborators convinced Colorado’s largest malpractice insurer to reduce premiums for doctors who completed the course. “That’s a pretty big thing,” Thornton says modestly.

The Healthy Impact! team also produced a series of public service announcements (PSAs) for public TV, aimed at the general public, in which real people of various ethnicities—a police officer, a teacher, a doctor—talk about what happens when they encounter someone from an ethnic group different from their own. The recurring message is “When I am working with people from other cultures, I take the time to ask, ‘What would be helpful for you and your family? How can I help?’ It’s good to ask.”

A dramatic PSA shows a child interpreting for a parent in a doctor’s office as bad news is being delivered. As an important part of their health care, the message encourages non-English-speaking patients to exercise their right to have access to an interpreter. Two Spanish-language radio stations were so impressed with the message that they produced a Spanish radio version, complete with lively music. “That was exciting to extend the message in another direction. I think and hope we empowered some people with those [PSAs], and encouraged better understanding in the medical, as well as non-medical arenas,” Thornton says.

The Healthy Impact! project has wound down, but the work continues. A training program on cultural competency is in the works for medical students at the University of Colorado at Denver. Members of the team support the project with their time and effort. Susan Thornton hopes that Healthy Impact! will continue to evolve in other ways. Like many Sound Partners projects, the seeds of change are planted, and continue to grow.

“I can’t point to a new law yet requiring, for example, physicians to take training in cultural competency when they renew their licenses, which would have been heaven on earth, but we have several legislators who are interested, and they may end up doing that a year or two down the line,” she says. You can bet Thornton and her team will keep the idea alive.

Originally Published in Local Voices Empowerment Issue.

Project Contacts

Contact Producer Susan Thornton 303-798-0844

Contact Pam Marsh at Rocky Mountain PBS

Project Media

View the TV PSA Asking for an Interpreter.

Download Positive Impact, a PDF publication of the Anti-Defamation League, used for project outreach.

Tags: Boulder, CO, Healthy Impact!, language
Topics: Building Community, Cultural Competence, Health Care, Partnerships