Best Practice Guidelines

The purpose of this manual by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is to provide valuable information about the current mental health status of Asian American and Pacific Islanders and resources for NAMI and other organizations who want to engage this community in a meaningful and culturally appropriate manner. 

• Chapter 1 explores the specifics of mental illness in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. 

• Chapter 2 discusses cultural competence and describes model programs and best practices in the field that have proven to be successful. 

• Chapter 3 details outreach steps and highlights NAMI affiliate efforts that can serve as examples to others looking to do similar work.

This report provides an overview of the literature on Pacific cultural competence in health care, focusing on the following key areas:

• relevant definitions of Pacific cultural competence, cultural competence and other related concepts

• studies that provide a rationale for, and outline the benefits of, different Pacific cultural competence approaches

• the role of Pacific cultural competence in service quality analysis to address Pacific cultural competence issues for the health and disability sector.

This toolkit was prepared by Family Bridges for the National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families. This toolkit will help service providers acquire cultural competence. Having cultural competence is defined as, “conducting one’s professional work in a way that is congruent with the behavior and expectations that members of a distinctive culture recognize as appropriate among themselves” by Sabin (as cited in Rice-Rodriguez & Boyle, 2006).