John D. Cowden, MD, MPH, QBS
Director, Culture & Language Coaching Program; Medical Director, Qualified Bilingual Staff Program; Professor of Pediatrics, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine; Clinical Assistant Professor of Population Health, University of Kansas School of Medicine
Full Biography
John Cowden, MD, MPH, QBS, Pediatrics, on behalf of Adelante Kansas City, received multiple grants that is being used for the culture and language coaching program for mental and behavioral health care providers.
Dr. Cowden received a one-year, $100,000 grant from the Health Forward Foundation that wrapped up in July 2023 as well as a one-year, $70,000 grant from the REACH Healthcare Foundation that wraps up in 2023. Both grants are being used for Adelante Kansas City, a Children’s Mercy-Kansas City program that works to advance the mental health and wellbeing of the Spanish-speaking, limited English proficiency population in the Kansas City metropolitan area through the safe provision of high-quality services.
Adelante KC provides free 1-on-1 coaching for bilingual providers at partner agencies offering mental health care for Latinx youth and families. Highly trained culture and language coaches (CLCs) support the effective delivery of such interventions by expanding providers’ cultural awareness and clinical language skills through in-visit coaching and post-visit training and practice.
“Adelante is an innovative approach to community health equity. We want to build a health science workforce that can safely and effectively communicate with people of different backgrounds and who speak different languages,” explains Dr. Cowden. “Although our current focus is on Spanish-speaking providers, we look forward to finding ways to extend these services with the help of financial partners in the coming years.”
Dr. Cowden explains that a future goal of the program is to create a “community of practice” network for bilingual healthcare providers in the Kansas City metropolitan region that could spread the professionalization of non-English language use in health care more quickly and more broadly than is possible with our current efforts.
Besides receiving the two grants, Adelante KC also received a $10,000 gift from GEHA that went toward the program.