Center for Public Health Practice offers practice-focused conferences in partnership with community partners to strengthen their capacity, knowledge, competency and incorporation of best practices regarding strategies and interventions to reduce health inequities and improve cultural and linguistic competency.

In 2006-2007, CPHP co-sponsored the following conference with The Center for Health Research and other community and academic partners:

TransNational Health: New Research on Health and Immigration
This one-day conference addressed the challenges of health and health care in an increasingly global economy. The flow of im/migrants across national boundaries—especially the boundary between California and Mexico—means that both prevention and care are complicated by linguistic and cultural differences, distinct systems of financing health services, and mobility of patients from country to country, region to region, and workplace to workplace.

Additionally, as a follow-up to the successful conference Privilege, Bias and Oppression: Addressing Barriers to Eliminating Health Disparities Within Health Organizations (The "-isms" Conference) held in 2006, CPHP offered a series of trainings for health practitioners (the "isms" includes racism, classism, sexism, ageism, heterosexism, able-body-ism, etc.):

Diversity Train-the-Trainer and Strategy Session: Managing the Dynamics of Difference
Presented by Gardenswartz and Rowe January 25-26, 2007
This, the first follow-up training to the –“isms” conference, was a diversity train-the-trainer program designed to develop the skills of individuals who can facilitate dialogues in their organizations that will promote internal cultural competence as a key component of delivering culturally competent care and addressing health disparities. This two-day session focused on both the fundamentals of diversity training and the methods for gaining organizational support for that training.

Diversity Film Facilitation Train-the-Trainer Program
for Bay Area public health and health care organizations
March 16, 23 and May 4, 2007
This training was the second follow-up to the –“isms” conference, and was developed so that individuals in organizations will be able to use a variety of films to stimulate meaningful conversations about the “-isms” in their organizations.

Organizational Self-Assessment: Focus on Multi-Cultural & Linguistic Competence & Equitable Care
A workshop for public health & health care organizations
June 11 and 12, 2007
This training, the third follow-up to the–“isms” conference and was designed to provide training participants with skills to: increase their understanding of organizational self-assessment as a tool for promoting equity, addressing disparities & improving quality of care & services, be able to explain the potential benefits of organizational self-assessment to others in their organization, and develop a plan of next steps for assessing organizational readiness for using organizational self-assessment.

For more information about these trainings and copies of the training materials, please email Obiel Leyva at obiel "at" berkeley.edu.