Healthcare Professionals Receive Valuable Insight from the Central Texas Healthcare Diversity Summit
The Texas Diversity Council's Central Texas Healthcare Summit took place on Thursday, August 23, 2012 at the St. Vincent de Paul Auditorium of the Seton Healthcare Family Administration Offices in Austin, TX. The event promoted dialogue, awareness, and support to organizational culture and diversity development strategies within the healthcare communities. Several healthcare professionals, corporate and non-profit organizations attended this year's healthcare summit to explore the theme, "Diversity and Cultural Competence in Healthcare".
Before the summit began, the attendees had breakfast and networked amongst themselves. Following the networking session, Dr. Harry Gibbs, Chief Diversity Officer of the University of Texas's M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, presented his speech, "How to Speak Multicultural." The attendees were fully engaged as Dr. Gibbs gave insight on organizational advancement and elements of cross- cultural communications.
Following Dr. Gibbs' speech, Geronimo Rodriguez, Vice President and Diversity & Community Outreach of Seton Healthcare Family and Mel Greene, Director of Diversity & Inclusion of Seton Healthcare Family and Director of Talent Acquisition for the Texas Methodist Hospital System, focused on "Seton Healthcare Family's Journey toward Inclusion, Equity and Access." Both speakers gave clear insight on how Seton intends to fully utilize its likenesses and differences to continuously improve services, strengthen programs, increase community communications, and to address health disparities within the community. Also included in their speech, was an overview of Project Search at Seton Medical Center Austin, a nine month professional internship for adults with intellectual disabilities.
The second half of the summit was reserved for the panelists, Paul Scott, AIDS Services of Austin; Patricia Brown, Central Health; Brion Oaks, American Heart Association; and Bonnie Clipper, St. David's Healthcare, who focused on the topic, "Inclusion and Cultural Competence at the Heart of Healthcare Excellence." The information shared at this healthcare summit exposed the attendees to best practices from leading organizations that have developed proven models of success in regards to increasing cultural awareness in the field of healthcare management.
The summit ended with closing remarks from Laura Alvarado, Communication and Program Manager of the Texas Diversity Council. The Texas Diversity Healthcare Council would like to thank all of the sponsors, speakers, and attendees for helping make the Gulf Coast Healthcare Summit a success.
