National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) in Health and Health Care

The National CLAS Standards are intended to advance health equity, improve quality, and help eliminate health care disparities by establishing a blueprint for health and health care organizations to:

• Principal Standard: Provide effective, equitable, understandable, and respectful quality care and services that are responsive to diverse cultural health beliefs and practices, preferred languages, health literacy, and other communication needs.

This crosswalk compares the National Standards for Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) in Health and Health Care to the Communication Climate Assessment Toolkit. The document presents each of the 15 National CLAS Standards alongside the relevant C-CAT measurement domains.

The National CLAS Standards are a set of action steps intended to help your health or health care organization improve its provision of culturally and linguistically appropriate services and therefore better meet the needs of all individuals, regardless of cultural background and/or communication needs. The National CLAS Standards, developed by the Office of Minority Health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ultimately aim to advance health equity, improve quality, and help eliminate health care disparities.