Harborview is the large King County hospital located on “Pill Hill” in the middle of Seattle. It is the only Level 1 Trauma Center for all of Washington, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. Harborview’s specific mission is to care for the county’s most vulnerable patients. As such, it forms the most visible part of the health care safety net for the Seattle area. I am always a bit awed by the scope of what they do, and have been able to see some of that firsthand this summer—from the high-tech trauma ICU to the low-tech/high touch Daryel /Somali Women’s Wellness Project.
A useful Harborview resource I highly recommend is Ethnomed. Ethnomed is Harborview Medical Center‘s ethnic medicine website. The main purpose of Ethnomed is to help busy health care providers integrate cultural information into their clinical practice. While Ethnomed’s focus is on the main refugee and immigrant population groups currently coming to and residing in Seattle/King County, there is also general cross-cultural information that would be useful in any area. There are links to specific cultures, to different clinical topics, and links to printable patient education handouts in different languages including Spanish. On the main page there’s a link to sign-up for Ethnomed’s electronic newsletter.