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Emergency care avoidance: Ethnic matching and participation in minority-serving programs

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Abstract

Using data from a county level mental health service system, relationships were examined between ethnic matching, program involvement and emergency service use. When clients were matched with an ethnically similar clinician who was also proficient in their preferred language, they had fewer emergency service visits than did clients who were unmatched on the basis of ethnicity and language. Equally if not more significant than ethnicity or language matching was the client's program and the proportion of minority clients it served. Clients in programs serving a relatively large proportion of minority clients had fewer emergency service visits than those in programs serving a smaller proportion of minority clients. More research is needed to document the impact of matching along with greater attention to minority oriented programs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley

    Lonnie R. Snowden Ph.D. & Teh-wei Hu Ph.D.

  2. Santa Clara County Mental Health Services Research Center, Santa Clara, USA

    Jeanette M. Jerrell Ph.D.

Authors
  1. Lonnie R. Snowden Ph.D.
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  2. Teh-wei Hu Ph.D.
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  3. Jeanette M. Jerrell Ph.D.
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Additional information

Center for Research on the Organization and Financing of Care for the Severely Mentally Ill. Teh-wei Hu is affiliated with the School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley and the Center for Research on the Organization and Financing of Care for the Severely Mentally Ill.

This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant # 1 RO1 MH46618-01.

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Snowden, L.R., Hu, Tw. & Jerrell, J.M. Emergency care avoidance: Ethnic matching and participation in minority-serving programs. Community Ment Health J 31, 463–473 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02188616

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02188616

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