Oregon Center for Youth with Special Needs is talking with underrepresented families.
The Latino Community Association is partnering with the Oregon Center for Youth with Special Needs to learn more about Latino families’ experiences getting health care services for their children with special health care needs.
“The purpose is to learn more about what’s working and what isn’t so that the health care system might serve families better,” said a recruitment flier from LCA.
To that end, the groups held a focus group in Madras to hear from local families about their experiences. They are also available to meet one on one with families that couldn’t make it to the sessions.
Oscar Gonzalez, LCA’s empowerment programs manager, said the Portland-based Oregon Center for Children and Youth with Special Needs is doing a study on children who have disabilities and come from historically underrepresented communities. The nonprofit contacted LCA to see if it would facilitate conversation in Central Oregon.
Gonzalez said they are looking for 60 people in the region.
“The conditions that we’re looking for are across the board, any sort of disability,” he said, to “find out what their experiences are, what they’re running into, what’s working and what’s not working.”
He expects the data collection to be finished by the end of the month, and he expects that LCA and the families who participated will gather again to learn from the data.
“We were just happy that they were wanting to take into consideration what our families were going through,” Gonzalez said. “I’m certain that their concerns are genuine in that sometimes culture and language and accessibility, it affects different people in different ways.”
He said the Portland group is working with other groups in different parts of Oregon to gather data, as well.
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To learn more, contact Claudia Bisso-Fetzer, 541-639-4259, option 2 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.; or Oscar Gonzalez, 541-350-8133 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Participants will receive $35.
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