Presentation Formats

Intensive training sessions. The pre-conference intensive training sessions are very popular half-day immersions on clinical, management, education, and policy issues. Presentations use interactive teaching methods that offer opportunities for discussion/small group breakouts and provide substantial take-home resources.

• Integrating cultural competence, language assistance, and disparity reduction into health care quality improvement programs, information systems, program evaluations and patient measurements
• Staff training on cultural and linguistic competence
• Health professions curricula development
• Organizational cultural competence, including developing business plans
• Improving the delivery of language access services
• Promoting health policies for culturally appropriate care

The sessions run for three (or six) hours, led by a 1-3 person presenter team on a single topic, with advance enrollment of up to 30 participants. There will be eight concurrent three-hour sessions in the morning, and eight in the afternoon. For more details, please see the Preconference page.

Main Conference (Monday, September 22-Wednesday, September 24, 2008)

Main conference workshops. Concurrent workshop sessions will feature two to three 30-minute presentations addressing specific implementation, educational, research or policy challenges from their own experiences in separate presentations. Moderators will facilitate discussion and problem-solving or strategy-devising with the audience, which will be encouraged to comment on their related experiences, ask questions, and dialogue with presenters.

Peer-to-peer practice advancement sessions.Many participants have commented on how useful it is to share experiences face-to-face with others working in their field of specialty. Introduced in 2004 and widely praised, peer-to-peer sessions are designed to facilitate the exchange and documentation of practice challenges and solutions. A group of 4-7 panelists engage in discussion of a specific practice challenge (e.g. how to design and market cultural competence training to busy health care professionals). An expert facilitator leads participants in a 2 hour session that includes discussion and brainstorming (with the audience) on cutting-edge practices and solving specific implementation problems. Background materials on each participant’s program are contained in the conference resource binder, and the session proceedings may be documented and summarized for later distribution.

Roundtable Discussions. This format features 3-6 panelists who engage in a moderated discussion of a multifaceted or controversial topic. The moderator plays a very active role, asking questions of the panelists and ensuring that all panelists (three to six people) have the opportunity to speak.

Film Festival. The Filmfest features several recently produced or in-production videos that use a variety of techniques and formats to convey cross-cultural health issues. This year we also welcome films on the immigrant experience or global migration issues. In 30-minute presentation segments, filmmakers will share their projects, show snippets or a long segment from the piece, receive feedback, and answer questions.

Best Practices Poster Presentations. This format is designed to inform conference participants about best practices and research in cultural competence by highlighting effective programs and practices, relevant practitioner oriented research, and strategic policy developments. Poster presentations will be hosted in the conference Resource Center.