Office of Minority Health

What's New

"Questions & Concerns: The Flu & the Flu Shot" Toolkit for Commmuity Leaders
Funds Available for Community Grants to Focus on Eliminating Health Disparities and Improving Health in South Carolina

Mission

“To promote and improve the health status of the minority population”

Vision
“Healthy minorities living in healthy communities”

Values

Customer Service:
OMH is committed to a culturally competent system for meeting the needs and expectations of our diverse customers.

Teamwork:

National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity Plan

The National Stakeholder Strategy for Achieving Health Equity provides a common set of goals and objectives for public and private sector initiatives and partnerships to help racial and ethnic minorities -- and other underserved groups -- reach their full health potential.

The strategy incorporates ideas, suggestions and comments from thousands of individuals and organizations across the country. Local groups can use the National Stakeholder Strategy to identify which goals are most important for their communities and adopt the most effective strategies and action steps to help reach them.

To learn more about the National Partnership for Action to End Health Disparities and the plan visit minorityhealth.hhs.gov/npa

OMH is committed to collaborative efforts that use teamwork,

strategies, respect differences and foster trust in accomplishing our goals.

Cultural Competence:
OMH is guided by cultural competence principles in all our efforts to advance minority health. We provide leadership and serve as the agency’s focal point for assuring a culturally competent public health system.

Use of Applied Scientific Knowledge for Decision Making:
OMH employs rational methods and public health state-of-the-art scientific data and research in designing and implementing minority health strategies.

We promote the collection, analysis and reporting of racial and ethnic data as an important tool in:

Monitoring trends over time at the national, state and local levels.
Evaluating programs, in particular evaluating intervention programs targeting minority populations to assure their cultural appropriateness.
Understanding health problems and identifying points of intervention.

Local Solutions to Local Problems:
OMH is dedicated to the active engagement and participation of minority individuals and groups in addressing health and environmental issues in the community.

Excellence in Government:
OMH is customer-driven and uses cultural competence as an indicator to assess the quality of programs and services for minority populations.

Our Employees:
OMH is committed to supporting our staff who are our most important resource and critical to the accomplishment of our agency’s mission. OMH provides mentoring, practicum and other opportunities to agency staff, public health students and others interested in minority health.

Core Functions

Planning, Program & Policy Development
Community Engagement and Capacity Building
Partnership Development
Health Promotion

South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control Office of Minority Health (SC DHEC OMH) is a member of the National Association of State Offices of Minority Health (NASOMH), an affiliate of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) . SC OMH works closely with US Department of Health and Human Services (US DHHS) OMH to carry out the goals of eliminating health disparities.