Developing a Self-Assessment Toolfor Culturally - Office of Minority ...

local board of health. PEP and PAG members recommended to revise response options sothey reflect the variability in organizational structure.Staffing Practices. In addition, LPHAs hire state and county employees, and manytimes have volunteers on their staff. Therefore, response options were revised to reflectthese differences and took into consideration civil servant hiring practices.Training Practices. LPHAs do not fund training directly (i.e., do not have a line itemin their budget for training). Staff training is either funded by the state or the local board ofhealth. Therefore, response options were revised to include, “training funded by the statehealth department” and “training funded by the local board of health.”Overall Item Terminology. The project team, in consultation with OMH staff and thePEP and PAG members, identified a number of terms found in the MCOs instruments thatneeded to be replaced with terminology that accurately represented LPHAs. For instance,while the MCO instruments included many items that made reference to an “organization,”the LPHAs instruments allude to an “agency.” Unlike MCOs, which are managed bysenior executives, LPHAs are managed by directors and some even by staff who serve inother capacities. Therefore, the instrument designated for MCO senior executives wasdesigned to be completed by the “local public health agency director or designee.”Also, the MCOs instruments included a number of items that discussed thecomposition of the board of directors. Because LPHAs are not managed by a board ofdirectors, the revised instruments substituted the term with “board of health or othergoverning body.” In addition, unlike MCOs that serve members, wording was changed to“clients,” and “health care services” was substituted with “local public health services.”Response options that referred to a “corporate parent” were replaced with “state healthdepartment or other governing body” or “board of health or other governing body.”Finally, response options that include “corporate trainers” were replaced with “trainersprovided by the local board of health or other governing body.”3.1.3 Pilot Test Results for the LPHAs CLAS Self-Assessment ToolAfter the self-assessment tool’s three questionnaires were developed, a pilot studywas conducted with respondents similar to those who would be completing thequestionnaires. The purpose of the pilot study was to test the appropriateness and accuracyof the instrumentation (format and content).The pilot study was conducted between March and June 2002, and queried threeindividuals from each of the three participating LPHAs. The three respondentsrepresenting a LPHA included a director, a staffing personnel respondent, and a clientservices personnel respondent. These individuals were asked to review and providecomments on the format and content of the instruments. For each questionnaire componentCOSMOS Corporation, December 2003 3-2