BHRS Office of Diversity & Equity and Alcohol and Other Drug Attend 2017 CPI Regional Training in Sacramento
Last week, San Mateo County BHRS and partner organizations traveled to Sacramento for the annual Community Prevention Initiative (CPI) Regional Trainings hosted by the Center for Applied Research Solutions (CARS). This year, the CPI Regional Trainings theme is Cultural Competence, a guiding principle of the Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF). If you would like a copy the conference presentations and resources contact Colin Hart at chart@smcgov.org.
The breadth of presentations was far reaching to include topics such as:
- Gathering Culturally Competent Data & Culturally Competent Evaluation
- Strategies for Gathering Culturally Competent Data for American Indian/Alaska Native Populations
- Youth Culture & Substance Use Disorder Youth Panel
- Creating Culturally Competent Substance Use Disorder Prevention Services for LGBTQ Populations
- Cultural Competency in Working with Immigrant and Refugee Populations
- Cultural Competency SUD Prevention Services for Native Populations
- Preventing Substance Use Disorders in Rural California
San Mateo County BHRS was represented by Colin Hart and Stella Chau. They shared their thoughts and takeaways from the two day event:
“I was reminded at the conference that I’ve worked in San Mateo County for 14 years and I’ve never researched the history of how different communities were formed in the county. Why does Daly City have such a large population of Filipinos? How did such a large difference in socioeconomic status come to be in certain regions? How are demographics changing now, especially with the demand for housing? They are questions that we should ideally find answers to, in order to better serve the community. At the conference we had to have some very honest discussions. One in particular that stood out was that sometimes in order to help certain communities, we may first need to find ways help it heal and then later help community members build capacity, so that any work that occurs can be sustained, by them, for them.” – Stella Chau, Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) Prevention Coordinator
“It was so great to see so many people in the same room working in several different fields from more than 25 counties in Northern California. During the conference, I was constantly thinking how San Mateo County can strengthen our commitment to cultural humility through organizational and programmatic initiatives. How can BHRS work harder to address the stark differences in suicide rates of LGBTQ identifying youth and adults? How can we all work to collect cultural competent data that can help our system better understand the inequities experienced by immigrant and refugee populations? How can our Language Assistance Program address the more than 1,000 regional dialects of the Asian Pacific Islander community? Some of these questions we don’t have the answer to and that’s okay. Cultural humility is about accepting our limitations, put aside our differences and biases and learn from each other.” – Colin Hart, Office of Diversity and Equity (ODE) Community Health Planner
Together we are stronger when we all work for a common purpose to understand how our clients’ cultural and ethnic differences relate to power, oppression, and the greater mental health and substance use disparities. With that, I leave you with a 3-minute video clip that was shared with conference attendees on the first day:
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