Mason County wins health grant

Money will close health care gaps for minorities

LORRINE THOMPSON, THE OLYMPIAN

Originally published November 1, 2001

MASON COUNTY -- County health officials are taking steps to improve health care for the county's growing number of minority residents with the help of a $150,000 grant.

The first step will be better communication.

"The basic problem is the lack of translation services," said Renee Youngs, chief financial officer with Mason General Hospital.

Part of the grant will be used to establish a pool of translators -- mainly Spanish-speaking -- for use by physicians, public health officers, nurses and other hospital staff members.

The grant will also pay for a full-time, two-year coordinator who will focus on improving connections with and health services for minority county residents, said Kim Klint, executive director of Mason Matters, a community agency.

A coalition of Mason County health organizations -- Mason General Hospital, Mason Matters and CHOICE Regional Health Network -- were awarded the grant from the Washington Health Foundation.

It was the largest of four grants given throughout the state to improve health care for minorities.

"That's an area of strong and ongoing concern here at the foundation," said Martin Perlman, spokesman for the foundation, a nonprofit agency working to strengthen the health of communities.

Minority care gap

In 1999, U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher noted that the health status of nonwhite Americans is poorer than that of white Americans, and called for elimination of the disparity.

For example, in Washington state in 2000, the death rate for infants under 1 year old was 5 per 1,000 for white babies, 7.2 for black babies, 9.4 for American Indian babies, 5.2 for Asian babies and 4.8 for Hispanic babies, who could be of any race.

In the same year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, white Washington residents had a 4.3 percent chance of contracting AIDS, while nonwhite state residents had a 10.4 percent chance of getting the disease.

Death rates, AIDS rates, heart disease, diabetes and other serious health conditions are often higher in minority residents, according to federal and state reports on health disparities.

American Indians in 1996 had a life expectancy six years less than white Americans, according to a state Department of Health report.

The same report said that differences in income, stress levels, access to care and quality of care could be factors in the health disparity.

"This is one of those areas that needs attention," Perlman said.

Finding needs

The Mason County health groups joined together to apply for the grant because "our community is really struggling to build the capacity to respond to this growing community," Klint said.

The county gained 2,282 additional nonwhite residents between 1990 and 2000, most of them Hispanic residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Before applying for the grant, health officials met with physicians and minority residents to ask what barriers exist to residents getting the care they need, Klint said.

In one problem area, she said, a growing community of Guatemalan immigrants in north Mason County were having conversations with health workers translated from their native language into Spanish, and then from Spanish into English.

"They were three languages out," Klint said.

In addition to creating a pool of interpreters, the coordinator will review health services to search for gaps, work on building better connections with all minority segments of the community, and look for policy and procedure changes that will lead to better health care.

One of the most important goals is to get minority residents using health services more regularly.

"Then we can find out better what people need," Klint said. "If people aren't even accessing (care), we don't know how big the problem is."

Health meeting

A community meeting to discuss the use of a grant to improve health services for minority residents is scheduled for 4 to 6 p.m. Nov. 28 at the Evergreen School auditorium, 807 W. Pine St., Shelton. For more information, call Kim Klint at 360-427-9670, Ext. 543.

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