: Steven Barnett MD is a family physician whose career has focused on healthcare with deaf people and families who communicate in American Sign Language (ASL). Deaf people who communicate in ASL are a medically underserved and understudied vulnerable minority with much in common with other linguistic and socio cultural minority groups. Dr. Barnett's career goal is to be a leading expert and independent researcher on the topic of health and healthcare with deaf people and their families. The University of Rochester is an ideal place to work toward that goal, since Rochester has a large deaf population and the University of Rochester Medical Center is motivated to become a center of excellence on health promotion and disease prevention with people who are deaf. In order to achieve his goal, Dr. Barnett will pursue more advanced research training, including formal coursework in survey methods, epidemiology and sampling methods. He will also work with mentors, consultant and advisors to create individualized curricula focused on skills development in mixed quantitative and qualitative research methods, advanced ASL, and psychometrics, including issues related to translation and adaptation of English language tools for use with non-English populations. Dr. Barnett will work with his mentors, consultant and community advisory board to conduct a research project to further his research skills development and to obtain new and valuable information about the healthcare experiences of deaf adult ASL-users. They will do this by translating and adapting the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) ambulatory care survey in order to collect information in ASL from deaf people about their healthcare experiences. They will administer CAHPS-ASL to four groups of deaf adult ASL-users in Rochester to learn about healthcare experiences in different settings. Dr. Barnett will bring the data and analyses back to his community advisory board and they will work together to plan future research and interventions to address the health and healthcare disparities experienced by deaf people and their families. CAHPS-ASL will be the first national survey adapted to learn about healthcare experiences from deaf adult ASL-users in their own language. Creating accessible research and addressing disparities are goals consistent with Healthy People 2010 objectives and essential to improve the quality and effectiveness of healthcare for this vulnerable population.
