With the increasing growth of racial and ethnic communities around West Michigan, everyone brings individual learned patterns of language and culture to the health care experience.
Companies that are respectful of, and responsive to, the health beliefs, practices, and cultural and linguistic needs of their employees will go a long way to produce positive health outcomes for these workers.
Take time to exercise cultural curiosity about your work force.
Ask, listen and seek to understand
Information is power and with this power, you can help drive healthier decision-making throughout your company.
Sit down and have a conversation with your employees, especially those from different cultures. What does health care mean to them? Where do they go for medical care? What do they believe about their own state of health? Do they know about available health-related resources in the community?
These conversations can produce important information — such as the employer who discovered many of her workers sought all their health care at the hospital and emergency room, because that’s how you accessed the “best doctors” in their native country.
It’s up to you to gain knowledge about your employees. Only then can you take action and form a positive, constructive, healthy relationship with them.
Language can be a big barrier to accessing health care in West Michigan, but it’s certainly not the only challenge.
What about workers who experienced a not-so-positive health care event? Their perception of health care is probably couched in fear and trepidation, and they’re not likely to seek out a doctor for anything, even a life-or-death emergency. Ask the workers what they may be concerned about, preferences and expectations for health care services.
And for some employees, the whole concept of insurance is new. They may not understand how to navigate health care, much less the idea of copays and other industry terms. For others, cultural barriers, such as male doctors treating female patients, present challenges as to how illness, disease, and their causes are perceived.
That’s when forward-thinking employers can go the extra mile to help their employees understand health care in the U.S., and make smarter health care choices.
Do something to help
Cultural curiosity about your work force will undoubtedly reveal many ways to improve how they access health care here.
Sometimes, it’s a matter of making sure information and resources are relevant to your employees. A free tobacco cessation seminar, for example, means nothing to workers who have no awareness of how harmful smoking is to their health. Workers who emigrate from other countries might not know what a primary care physician does, and may need help finding one.
In many cases, cultural-specific community resources are available that can help provide direction to health care services and information, and also provide a source for networking.
The more you understand about how employees with different cultural backgrounds perceive health care, the better you can address their concerns head-on — and help them achieve improved health and productivity, on the job and at home.
Bob Van Eck is vice president of clinical improvement at Priority Health in Grand Rapids. He writes a monthly column on wellness for Business Review West Michigan's Health Monthly.