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

Principal Standard

1. Provide effective, understandable, and respectful quality care and services that respond to cultural health beliefs and practices, languages, health literacy, and other communication needs.

Governance, Leadership and Workforce

2. Advance and sustain organizational governance and leadership that promotes CLAS through policy, practices, and allocated resources.
3. Recruit, promote, equip, and support a governance, leadership, and workforce that respond to the digital, cultural and language needs of the population.
4. Educate and train governance, leadership, and workforce regularly on CLAS practices and resources.

Communication and Language Assistance

5. Offer language assistance to individuals who have limited English proficiency and/or other communication needs, at no cost to them, to facilitate timely access to all health care and services.
6. Inform all individuals, in writing and orally, of the availability of language assistance services in English and other languages that serve their linguistic needs.
7. Ensure the competence of individuals providing language assistance through training and certification, when available, recognizing that the use of untrained individuals and/or minors as interpreters should be avoided and discouraged.
8. Provide easy-to-understand digital and print materials and signage in the languages commonly used by the populations in the service area.

Engagement, Continuous Improvement, and Accountability

9. Establish culturally and linguistically appropriate goals, policies, and management accountability, and infuse them throughout the organization’s planning and operations.
10. Conduct ongoing assessments of the organization’s integration of CLAS-related activities and measures into quality improvement activities.
11. Collect and maintain accurate and reliable demographic data to monitor and evaluate the impact of CLAS on health outcomes and to inform service delivery.
12. Conduct regular assessments of community health assets and needs and use the results to plan and implement services that respond to the cultural and linguistic needs of populations in the service area.
13. Partner with the community to design, implement, and evaluate cultural and linguistically appropriate practices and impact.
14. Create culturally and linguistically appropriate processes to identify, prevent, and resolve conflicts, complaints, or grievances.
15. Communicate the organization’s progress in implementing and sustaining CLAS to all stakeholders, constituents, and the general public.