Chinese Nurse Association Of America

Chinese Nurse Association of America is a non-for-profit organization incorporated in the state of Rhode Island. It’s mission is to provide a forum for collective actions by the Chinese American Nurses to investigate and to advocate for the health care needs of Chinese American, in order to improve the access to health care and health status of Chinese American and other minorities as well.

RI Chinese Health Promotion Center

With the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention grants from RI Department of Health, Chinese Nurse Association of American established a RI Chinese Health Promotion Center in Pawtucket, RI. We collect and distribute health education, health promotion materials, develop cultural appropriate and age specific education program and brochures then translate into Chinese and offer to our community. We serve all age groups of Chinese people, from school aged children to the elderly group. Four workshops have been conducted and three health fairs be hosted and six health education articles will be published on RI Chinese Newsletter in the grant year. The following health issue is to be addressed:

Depression is the most common mental illness in the United States. Many Chinese immigrants suffer from depression because of major life style changes and the hardships they may have faced. However, according to the research, because of the language barrier, cultural difference and lack of access to health care, they are often under-diagnosed and untreated.  Chinese Health Promotion Center will conduct a survey among RI Chinese women to assess the risk factors of depression and promote awareness of depression and encourage them for early diagnosis and early treatment.

Immunization can help control the spread of infectious disease. However, for the new immigrants, because of language barrier and cultural differences, they do not know their immunizations are due or late even though they got letters or phone calls from their health care providers. We will translate the Immunization timeline published by Department of Health into Chinese to distribute to the community and remind the newcomers and their children to get vaccinated.  To meet the Healthy Rhode Island 2010 Objectives, we assisted Chinese elderly attended the annual flu shot sponsored by RIACA in November 2004.

According to the health data by Neighborhood and Race, presented to the RI Office of Minority Health Minority Health Promotion Centers on June 24, 2003 by the Providence Plan, RI Asian birth-to-teen mothers increased to 20 % of all the teen pregnancy of RI, the only racial group with increased teen pregnancy. RI Asian has highest delayed prenatal care, and birth-to-single Asian mothers are increasing. Unintended pregnancies are resulted from unprotected sexual behaviors. We need to encourage adolescents to abstain or to have safe and responsible sexual behaviors. We plan to promote both awareness and prevention of sexual transmitted disease and unintended pregnancy in Asian community.

To promote access to health care is a one of the priorities of the RI Chinese Health Promotion Center’s goal. According to the data published on the Website of Department of Health Office of Minority, Asian groups have a higher percentage of people without health insurance; RI Asian visited emergency room instead of primary care more frequent than the average Rhode Islander; and Asian pregnant women had inadequate prenatal care. We will educate Chinese immigrants about the important to receive early and adequate prenatal care and offer interpreter to help them get medical care and related referral process. We will offer free blood pressure screening and blood sugar checking every week.

Smoking is a major risk factor for heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and chronic lung problems. To educate Asian American about the danger of smoking and second-hand smoking is one of our health promotion objectives. We also teach the benefits of having regular physical activity and the importance of using safety seats for the children and wearing safety belts when driving in order to prevent injury.

We offer free Blood pressure screening and blood sugar checking to our community. For our community’s convenience, the nurses are there in the Promotion center every Sunday morning to have the client’s questions answered and their BP checked.

Community Support and Linkages

Chinese Nurse Association of America (CNAA) brings the RI Chinese Americans together in addressing the health care needs in our community. We have received support letters from the Star Chinese Language School of RI, Chinese Christian Church of RI (CCCRI), RI Association of Chinese American (RIACA) and RI Onleung Merchandise Association in the past. All the health promotion workshops were conducted in the Chinese Church in Pawtucket and the announcements were always published in RI Chinese Newsletter. Workshops were always well attended. The parents from Star Chinese Language School always help us to organize the workshop and help prepare refreshments and at the end of the events.

As always, RIACA, CCCRI, Star Chinese Language School of RI and RI Chinese Newsletter continue to show their strong support by backing our efforts to maintain the health promotion center. Our optimal goals are to improve our community’s access to health care services, improve our ability to better understand health information and eliminate health disparities.

Copyright © 2002-2005 Chinese Nurse Association of America