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Helping New Americans find the resources they need to feel comfortable in their new home.

Significant issues around the ease of accessing healthcare and communicating with healthcare professionals exist for immigrant and refugee communities. These issues are exacerbated by fundamental cultural differences in views on medical treatment, particularly concerning mental health.

 

Welcoming Plan Goals

  • Increase the number of positive interactions between healthcare professionals and immigrant and refugee communities as an essential means of building trust and improving outcomes.

  • Improve knowledge about navigating the U.S. healthcare system for immigrant refugee patients.

  • Foster understanding regarding cultural differences in how mental health is seen, understood, and treated.

  • Increase the scope and conveyance of mental health education and services for immigrant and refugee communities.

  • Increase access to financial literacy programs that promote building credit, homeownership, investment, and wealth-building.

  • Promote the value of including immigrants and refugees in the development of comprehensive housing plans in Central Ohio.

  • Improve availability of and access to affordable housing for immigrants and refugees.

  • Create a landlord tenant network to improve the relationships between landlords and immigrant and refugee tenants.

  • Promote the appreciation of multilingualism and its benefit to enhancing our global economy, social, and cultural ecosystem.

  • Promote the understanding of Title VI requirements to provide services in multiple languages.

  • Create an equitable process for obtaining access to affordable legal services for immigrants and refugees to ensure their safety, livelihood, health and well-being, and ability to thrive in the Central Ohio region.

Welcoming City Strategies

    • Expand training about multicultural competency, race, equity, and social justice for medical professionals, hospitals, and clinics.

    • Develop an emergency management communications plan for Limited English Proficient residents.

    • Develop a standard procedure for how to interact respectfully with multicultural and multilingual communities.

    • Require multicultural competency, race, equity, and inclusion training for medical systems and service providers.

    • Formalize working agreements with nonprofit organizations that serve immigrants and refugees to provide educational training and bilingual marketing materials on navigating the healthcare system.

    • Promote awareness of mental health challenges and addiction and recovery and diminish stigma through a strategic marketing campaign emphasizing professional assistance, support, and outreach sources.

    • Increase interpreter services training workshops and expand scope to include multicultural competency component.

    • Create language access plans for the City of Columbus and Franklin County.

    • Develop an ESL master asset map for the Central Ohio region and develop a marketing and communications plan to raise awareness of where language services are provided.

    • Develop a coordinated system of encouraging employers, government, and social service agencies to create language access plans and encourage language access services.

    • Invest in interpreter services training for employers, government and social service agencies to understand the impact it will have in creating a welcoming community.

    • Provide more accessible ESL classes that are in sync with free or affordable childcare options.

    • Explore safe transportation options to attend classes.

    • Emphasize the importance of starting ESL classes earlier and provide instruction for parents to help their children learn English.

    • Develop a robust supportive service network and database of attorneys who provide affordable or pro-bono legal services to address immigration and employment issues.

    • Support and promote nonprofit organizations that host free legal clinics and provide affordable immigration services.

    • Develop a long-term hiring strategy for recruiting multilingual and internationally trained professionals through apprenticeships and benefits packages that include educational opportunities for upward mobility within the healthcare system.

    • Focus on retention through multicultural competency, race, equity, and inclusion training workshops and host lunch and learn conversations with staff.

    • Establish ongoing relationships between organizations that serve immigrants and refugees and the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority and local developers to discuss projection of housing needs of new arrivals.

    • Explore the allocation of affordable housing development requirements to be used for the unsubsidized population, while requiring developers to include unsubsidized low-income housing into all financing plan.

    • Provide access to bilingual information, services, and products regarding tenants’ rights, housing terminology and system, and acts of discrimination.

    • Support and address concerns of uninhabitable substandard living conditions and hold landlords accountable.

    • Provide multicultural competency education to reduce cultural differences as barriers to equitable housing.

    • Develop a plan with tax incentives (or subsidies) to motivate employers who provide Contextualized English programs in the workplace.

    • Celebrate bilingualism and offer language online courses for native English-speaking employees to learn other languages.

    • Establish a fund to provide financial assistance to immigrants and refugees in need of legal services and resources.