As the only federal program dedicated solely to providing family planning and reproductive health, Title X provides a broad range of effective family planning methods and services to those who may need them the most but to whom they may not readily available. Using a comprehensive network of community-based clinics, Title X helps ensure access to health care for low-income and uninsured clients, who tend to be members of underrepresented racial and ethnic groups and for whom the only continuing source of health care and health education is often the public clinic.

The overall intent of the project is to document the current strategies implemented — as well as the barriers, challenges, and gaps — by Title X family planning clinics to provide culturally competent care. Altarum assisted the Office of Population Affairs by doing the following:

• Developing a literature review to provide a systematic review of approaches to addressing cultural competence in health care and in family planning specifically and document successful strategies for delivering culturally competent care
• Conducting key informant interviews to explore the goals and desired outcomes of culturally competent approaches, the need and desire for culturally competent services, and the challenges and recommendations for programs implementing culturally competent approaches
• Conducting site visits to Title X programs to examine the specific strategies for providing culturally competent services from the perspective of those delivering and receiving the services (e.g., clinic administrators, staff members, and clients)
• Developing a synthesis report that included a summary analysis of the types of culturally competent approaches being used in Title X clinics and their content, examples of promising practices or the strategies determined to be most effective, and recommendations for the future to help inform a national strategy for addressing cultural competence within Title X programs