Initiative Goals

The Ethical Force Program's patient centered communication initiative has the primary goal of developing a performance assessment toolkit to help health care organizations ensure effective, patient centered communication.

In prior work, the program has developed a process to create its products (such as its tool kits) and ensure that they are ready for quick and easy use. This process is reflected in the following specific goals for this initiative:

• To conduct a formal review of existing tools for measuring cultural competence, language barriers, health literacy, and cross-cultural communication within health care organizations.
• To create a national consensus report describing known organizational factors that influence patient-centered communication for vulnerable populations, including content areas and specific performance expectations for assessment.
• To develop a self-assessment toolkit for key stakeholders—hospitals and health centers—and field test the toolkit in organizations across the United States.