The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Training Program funds public and private nonprofit institutions of higher learning that provide training and education to those working in maternal and child health professions.
A major objective of the MCH Training Program is to support trainees, faculty, continuing education, and technical assistance to train the next generation of leaders in maternal and child health. The MCH Training Program places emphasis on interdisciplinary, family-centered, culturally competent care with a population-focused, public health approach.
In support of this objective, the National Center for Cultural Competence (NCCC), with input from an expert MCH faculty work group, developed a set of checklists to assess cultural and linguistic competence within the MCH Training Program. Each checklist addresses a different aspect of the infrastructure, function, policy, and practice of training programs. The checklists are not designed to measure the cultural and linguistic competence of a given program; rather they provide a structure for discussion and self-examination to facilitate programmatic and organizational change.
The themes for each checklist were chosen with input from the expert work group and include the following:
