~Providing Culturally Competent Services
for American Indian and Alaska Native Veterans to Reduce Health Care
Disparities
~
Introduction
The
article is about a study conducted in veteran facilities in the western region
for Alaska Native and American Indians veterans. The area where the research
was done, is an area of a disadvantaged minority, and they can hardly access
health facilities due to the geographical remoteness. They are also
disadvantaged because they are poorly ranked when it comes to educational
attainment, employment, income and home ownership (Noe
TD, 2016, pg. 1). The research is about the various health facilities in
this region and the characteristics that determine whether the facility is
ready to provide culturally competent services to Alaska Natives and American
Indians to minimize health care disproportionality.
The communities have reservations on
seeking health care from the facilities set up for them due to the
dissatisfaction of the services offered at the veteran affair health care
facilities and as a result seek assistance from their fellow tribal healers.
The researchers used the Organizational Readiness to Change Assessment
method(ORCA) the determine a facility’s capacity and readiness to proportion
community-specific services. The method has three main areas which are;
evidence, context, and facilitation. They also utilized sampling method. They
sampled the western region and from this sample, they selected a few veteran
affairs facilities (Noe TD, 2016, pg. 4).
According to the researchers, the
findings were that the variables of ORCA had a high score. The results proved a
small portion of their hypothesis which was higher scores on the ORCA
organizational readiness to change measures, had to be associated with a high
chance of employees perceiving their facilities were catering to the needs of
specific communities (Alaska Natives/ American Indians), and greater employment
of community-specific programs. The study also showed the need for improvement
in the facilities for to be able to cater for needs of the communities.
The research majored on a small
geographical sample. However, the findings were conclusive, and they would be
applied in the decision that would follow.
The method (ORCA) was, therefore, efficient and can, therefore, be
employed to high populations to determine how effective change would be if it
were to be implemented in an organization.
The ORCA method may be utilized for a
study on health care issues and help come up with changes that may assist in
the provision of better health care. Cancer can affect anyone but with
social-economic disparity patients from poverty stricken areas have a higher
probability of dying compared to those who are better and can be able to afford
and manage the disease ("Cancer Facts & Figures 2014", 2016)
ORCA applied in the case of cancer
patients among those who are not financially well of would be used by health
providers, for example, a country in Africa. ORCA has a framework which is
evidence, context, and facilities. For evidence, it is a fact that poor
populations are likely to die in large numbers compared to the financially
capable. Leaders in these countries if they were to zero in on providing the
healthcare to their citizen, they would minimize the mortality rate. If a study
is conducted using this method, it will be able to determine the workability of
this proposition. The final step of the model would be facility assessment
which would be defining the facilitation of the health centers. ("Organizational
readiness to change assessment (ORCA) tool | Resource Details | National
Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools", 2016)
Application of Organizational Readiness to Change Assessment in this research has given the researcher more finding that would facilitate future decisions to be made. The research method would be appropriate for organizations which would want to implement changes, and they want to determine if the changes would work before the executing them.
References
Cancer Facts & Figures 2014. (2016). Cancer.org. Retrieved 18 June 2016, from
http://www.cancer.org/research/cancerfactsstatistics/cancerfactsfigures2014/
Organizational readiness to change assessment (ORCA) tool | Resource Details | National
Collaborating Centre for Methods and Tools. (2016). Nccmt.ca. Retrieved 18 June 2016,
from http://www.nccmt.ca/resources/search/187
Noe TD, e. (2016). Providing culturally competent services for American Indian and Alaska
Native veterans to reduce health care disparities. - PubMed - NCBI. Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
Retrieved 18 June 2016, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25100420
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