Minority leaders collaborate in ‘Dialogue for Progress’

By Winyan Soo Hoo

The government’s Asian, Hispanic, and women’s commissions candidly lay community concerns on the table at a recent conference in Maryland. Aptly named Dialogue for Progress, the event had participants speaking about everyday difficulties faced as minorities and ways they could surmount such problems.

Differences between the groups blurred as they learned that the same issues run across cultures.

At the event, Secretary of Human Resources Christopher McCabe espoused group discussion on leading topics such as child abuse prevention and child support enforcement. The commissions also provided information about resources community members can receive about labor licensing and regulation, grants, health, education and housing. 

“The information is here, but we just need to get it in the right hands,” Rodriguez said. “We are opening a one-stop-shop where everyone is welcome. Our belief is that there needs to be a two way street – we have experts willing to share information and we also have the community coming in with questions and suggestions.”

As the lead organizer, Rodriguez naturally invited the three commissions housed together under the Maryland Department of Human Resources. She said they wanted to follow their mandate to “look out for one another” in their first dialogue with one another. 

“We thought it would be more effective if the commissions joined forces,” said Haydee Rodriguez, executive director of the Commission on Hispanic Affairs. “Traditionally, these are underrepresented communities.”

The give-and-take attitude inspired lengthy discussions led by field leaders, such as Dr. Carlessia Hussein of the Office of Minority Health.

Hussein tapped on the periphery of minority health, which included overviews of health insurance, access to care, prenatal care, and infant mortality rates for Hispanics and Asians. The infant mortality rates are not much of a problem for the Asians as it is for Hispanics, Hussein said. In 2004, data showed Asians with 4 per 1000 live births – lower than whites.

Instead, Asians should focus on diabetes prevention, Hussein said. She noted the increase of type 2 diabetes cases for Asian Americans over the last 10 years, with data from her office.

“I go before each of these groups with data that we need to share, so we can work on solutions in the local level,” Hussein said. “With this information, we can promote recommendations within each county.”

Hussein said she’s found a greater need for collaboration across minority and government groups. At the dialogue she exchanged valuable information with the women’s and disability commissions.

“We don’t each need to reinvent the wheel,” Hussein said. “I received census data from each of the groups at the event. This helps us become more descriptive of the types of Asian groups around the state than we had known about before.”

David Lee, executive director of the Governor’s Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs, chose speakers who he considered to be the most relevant.

“A lot of community and faith based organizations, such as local churches have been asking me about grants and that’s one area I believe the APA community has really underutilized,” Lee said.

For this reason, Lee also brought in Eric Brenner from the Governor’s Office on Grants to discuss all topics related to financial assistance. Brenner helped produced a red book on state assistance programs, as well as Web based tools program: www.gov.state.md.us/grants.html.

“We can show people how they can research opportunities online – how they can find the right people in the government to talk to,” Brenner said. “A lot of times people will find their way to our office after much research and we help them tie a lot of things together and we help them find what’s out there.”