When general pediatrics fellow Lisa DeCamp started seeing patients at the Children’s Medical Practice (CMP) at Johns Hopkins Bayview in July 2010, she wasn’t too surprised by the number of Spanish-speaking patients in the outpatient clinic. After all, she had completed medical school and residency in North Carolina, the state with the fastest growing Latino population from 1990 to 2000. Now seeing a similar transformation at the CMP – where today the majority of patients are Spanish-speaking – she knew these families brought unique needs that needed extra attention, maybe through a Latino family advisory group. And as a Spanish major in college who had a fair amount of clinical experience with Latino families, she was just the person to lead such an effort.

“I already had an interest in working with this population in clinic and coming up with ways to improve their care,” DeCamp says. “I was looking for a project to take on and this was it.”

Children’s Medical Practice pediatricians Darcy Thompson and Sarah Polk, both of whom focus their research on Latino health care, felt the same way and began collaborating with DeCamp on next steps. Envisioning a Latino family advisory board, they sought and were awarded start-up funds via a grant from the Thomas Wilson Sanitarium for the Children of Baltimore. Their vision got closer to reality, but for it to work they knew they needed strong involvement from the Latino families themselves.

“We’re different from these families in a lot of ways – ethnicity, culture, language and socioeconomic status – so trying to walk in their shoes is difficult,” DeCamp says. “One of the best ways to understand what does and does not work is to hear their clinic experiences and ideas on what would help make them better.”

The trio enlisted 12 Latino families who were both newcomers and veterans in the clinic, and with them began to form a structure for the group, address issues like access and communication, and develop goals. Agenda items at the first meeting of the Children’s Medical Practice Latino Family Advisory Board in September included appointment wait times, same-day sick care, and telephone communications. Future agenda items include development of a dental tool kit for Latino pediatric patients, who tend to have high rates of tooth decay. The group is considering partnering with Bayview obstetrics to improve newborn teaching for Latino moms.

“The nurses do a wonderful job of discharge teaching but they aren’t always able to do that for our Spanish speaking moms because of language barriers,” DeCamp says. “Is there a brochure, video or other educational materials we could develop for them in Spanish?”

While DeCamp notes that the stated mission of the Board is to improve care at the Children’s Medical Practice, she adds that the group’s achievements may influence care for inpatients, too. Charles Reuland, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Bayview Medical Center, tends to agree.

“Becoming a more culturally competent organization for all of our patients is an important goal for us,” Reuland says, “and this initiative is a shining example of that effort.”