The Network of Ethnic Physician Organizations is a coalition of California's ethnic physician organizations. NEPO is one of the many projects of the California Medical Association Foundation and is designed to identify strategies for building the capacity of ethnic physician organizations to reduce healthcare disparities.

Through increased collaboration with community organizations and by advocating for policy change in the public sector and within organized medicine, NEPO aims to address cultural competency and diversity in the healthcare workforce while assisting physicians with the improvement of access to healthcare for their communities. NEPO's kick-off meeting was held at the OCMA offices. Orange County Medical Association President Satinder Swaroop, MD, serves as the NEPO chair, and Jose Arevalo, MD, serves as NEPO vice-chair.

NEPO held its first 2008 steering committee meeting on Jan. 26 with 22 physician leaders attending from around the state. CMA President Richard Frankenstein, MD, offered the commitment of the CMA to work with NEPO. The CMA Foundation and NEPO are studying how to strengthen solo and small-group ethnic physician practices in safety net communities. The Quality Improvement Solo and Small Group Ethnic Physician Project is a two-year needs-assessment process, in which solo and small-group practices will be identified in four major regions of California-Northern California, Central Valley, Los Angeles and San Diego. The results will serve to develop recommendations to strengthen the capacity of solo and small-group physician practices to address health disparities. A key focal point of the steering committee meeting was the presentation of results from the QISS Project Physician Office Assessments. Results from the 40 primary care practice assessments were presented by NEPO's project consultants, San Francisco State Public Research Institute and CMA Foundation staff, with ethnic physician leaders providing their insights. The steering committee meetings in 2008 are scheduled on July 19 and November 8.

For more information, please contact Elissa Maas, vice president of programs, at emaas@cmanet.org or by phone at 916/551-2555.