Shown here are statewide planning team members, Susan Vang and Laura Leonelli, who are members of the Hmong Health Collaborative.

For the past two years, FIRM, as part of the Hmong Health Collaborative, has participated in the California Reducing Disparities Project. An initiative of the California Department of Mental Health, the project has worked to promote strategies to reduce disparities in mental health treatment between Caucasian and other diverse populations in California.  FIRM staff joined with Hmong Health Collaborative partners and others from throughout the state in helping to develop the statewide California Reducing Disparities project recommendations.

FIRM, through the Hmong Health Collaborative, has been serving on the Asian Pacific Islander (API) Workgroup of CRDP.  The API Workgroup had its final conference in Los Angeles on February 1, releasing a report identifying 56 community tested strategies to help API populations access mental health services.

Rev. Sophia DeWitt, Director of Health Programs at FIRM, attended the conference together with Rev. Dr. Sharon Stanley. The next steps in this effort are to advocate with the State Legislature in order to protect funding for report implementation—in what is hoped to be a four year implementation process.

Rev. Dr. Sharon Stanley also participated in helping to lead a workshop at the conference on “Spiritual Perspectives on Mental Health Care in Ethnic Communities.”