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EthnoMed is a website containing medical and cultural information on immigrant and refugee groups. It contains information specific to groups in the Seattle area, but much of the cultural and health information is of interest and applicable in other geographic areas. The project started in 1994 to bridge cultural and language barriers during medical visits. The objective is to make information about culture, language, health, illness and community resources directly accessible to health care providers who see patients from different ethnic groups. EthnoMed is designed to be used in clinics by care providers in the few minutes before seeing a patient in clinic. For instance, before seeing a Cambodian patient with asthma, a provider might access EthnoMed and learn how asthma is translated in a particular culture, and about common cultural and interpretive issues in the Cambodian community that might complicate asthma management. A practitioner could also download a patient education pamphlet in Cambodian to give to the patient.
EthnoMed is designed to be available in neighborhood or school clinics, hospitals, libraries - wherever the Internet is accessible - so that the file can be consulted immediately before seeing the patient. The ethnic groups included to this date are the Amharic, Cambodian, Chinese, Eritrean, Hispanic, Oromo, Somali, Tigrean, and Vietnamese. Other ethnic groups will be included as materials are written.
EthnoMed is intended to be a community voice in the clinic, so user feedback is essential. Ethnic organizations are urged to tell us about ongoing activities and resources in order that they may be added to our local resource information. EthnoMed assumes that culture is dynamic, particularly immigrant cultures, and for this reason an interactive electronic medium is particularly well suited to capture and express the changing cultural nuances. As immigrant groups acculturate and communities react to the change in unique directions regionally, EthnoMed can reflect this pattern of change. We assume that as groups acculturate, traditional concepts will be modified and so we solicit periodic review and feedback from community leaders about changing health concepts in their communities. Ethnic community profiles have been developed and reviewed by members of our local ethnic organizations. We welcome comments and suggestions from members of these ethnic groups around the world. As providers learn from their patients about traditional treatments, cultural perspectives or resources, we urge them to share this information with us.
EthnoMed is a joint project of University of Washington Health Sciences Library and the Harborview Medical Center's Community House Calls Program. Initial support was provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation through their joint initiative, "Opening Doors: A Program to Reduce Sociocultural Barriers to Health Care". Partial support has been provided through grants from the UW Libraries Allen Endowment for Programs and the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. Currently some funding is being provided by the Asian American Network for Cancer Awareness, Research and Training, a national effort funded by NIH to increase cancer awareness among Asian Americans.
The EthnoMed development team currently consists of Ellen Howard, MLS, Medical Librarian; Carey Jackson, MD, MPH, UW Division of General Internal Medicine; Ann Marchand, General Internal Medicine; Christine Wilson Owens, Community House Calls program. Team members work with others at the UW and in the community who serve as writers, community contacts, and reviewers.
EthnoMed is looking for short one to two page documents on cultural and health topics ranging from teen violence to the common cold to breast-feeding. Examples include: How do Cambodians express the concept of depression? What are Eritrean folk remedies for fever? Do Vietnamese refugees practice male circumcision? Patient education materials in native language are also welcomed. If you are interested in contributing, please browse the EthnoMed Contributor's Guide.
EthnoMed is exploring the use of audio as a patient education tool.
There are several examples of this currently on Ethnomed:
If you are interested in creating audio files, we have described the process we've used in Digital Audio Recording.
Feedback from health professionals working with ethnic groups in Seattle and elsewhere has been very positive. As the project progresses, EthnoMed hopes to collaborate with other groups in developing similar files for other ethnic communities.