Press Releases: Northwest
April 28, 2004
Kaiser Permanente wins fair workplace award from Oregon rights group
PORTLAND, Ore. – Kaiser Permanente Northwest recently received the Fair Workplace Project Award for promoting a fair workplace for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered employees. The award was bestowed by Basic Rights Oregon's Education Fund, a non-profit group working to end discrimination in Oregon based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The award represented years of effort by Kaiser Permanente to ensure its policies and practices are more inclusive and fair to sexual minorities in both employment and providing health care and services. One of the state's largest private employers, with more than 7,000 other staff from Salem to Longview, Wash., Kaiser Permanente was recognized for:
- adopting equal benefits for employees' same-sex domestic partners
- officially recognizing an employee association for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered staff
- publishing and distributing a provider's handbook on culturally competent care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered patients
- instituting policies prohibiting harassing or discriminatory behavior
Since last year, Kaiser Permanente has also been working to delete from its information systems derogatory or inappropriate language around sexual behaviors, gender identity and sexual orientation.
Roey Thorpe, executive director of Basic Rights Oregon, said her organization was very impressed with steps Kaiser Permanente has taken to educate staff about diversity and improve protections against gender identity discrimination. "It's so impressive, and so far ahead of the other major health care providers, that it was an easy choice to decide to honor Kaiser Permanente," she wrote in notifying the program that it was selected as one of two winners of the fairness award this year (the other was a group in Bend).
Kaiser Permanente's Vice President for Health Plan Operations Sue Hennessy and Director of Patient-centered Care Sue Caulfield, RN, from Kaiser Sunnyside Medical Center, accepted the award. Caulfield is co-leader, along with internist Dick Bills, MD, of Kaiser Permanente Northwest Pride, the program's association for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered employees. Current membership stands close to 200.
Caulfield says that workplace discrimination and harassment not only affect people's ability to earn a living and get their job done, but also their health, self-respect and well-being.
In accepting the award on behalf of Kaiser Permanente, Caulfield described how the acceptance she's felt at work has been a positive factor in her life. "Acceptance and inclusion are the right thing to do," says Caulfield. "Kaiser Permanente has a long history of doing the right thing. Creating a workplace where everyone is valued and treated with dignity regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity is just another example."
Kaiser Permanente is a group practice health care organization serving the health needs of 8.2 million people in nine states and the District of Columbia, including more than 440,000 people in Oregon and Southwest Washington.
