Barrington Hunt: A Healthy Dose of Networking

Barrington Hunt, lecturer, Health Sciences, participated in the Annual Banquet Celebration of the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA), held on the Observation Deck of the Los Angeles City Hall on Jan. 31. Hunt, who is the Limited English Proficiency (LEP) Adminstrator of Community Health Services, Los Angeles County Public Health (LACPH), served as a networking contact for the members and graduate students in attendance, who are interested in careers in health care management.

Assistant professor of public administration and public policy Iris Baxter
(Class of ’90, B.S., ’92, M.P.A.) and professor of public administration and public policy David Karber are council members of Los Angeles Metro ASPA. Baxter presented a talk on ASPA's upcoming projects, including career development and multi-organizational networking for students.

Hunt also presented at the Semi-Annual Conference of the American Association of Teachers of German (AATG), Southern California Division, held at California State University, Long Beach, on Feb. 4.  His bilingual presentation titled, “Faculty Tours of Health and Educational Institutions in Germany and the European Union,” highlighted issues such as health insurance and bridging the language and culture gap in healthcare.

“The concept of health insurance paid for by both the employer and the employee was invented and implemented in Germany in the late 1800s,” explains Hunt. “Over the decades, Germany created a highly developed system of health care for all based on regulations at the national, state and local levels, and other Western European countries have variations of this system. We can learn from their experiences.”

Hunt says that European nations can borrow a few things from the American health care system, such as the best use of cutting edge medical technology, pharmaceuticals and information systems (medical data bases), preventive/public health, disaster planning and patient confidentiality requirements.

Attendees from 30 campuses including UCLA, UC Irvine, CSU Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College, El Camino College, and various high schools participated in hands-on sessions focusing on the latest multimedia techniques for teaching languages, cultures and societal issues in the classroom.

As an LEP administrator, Hunt’s responsibilities include arranging needed language interpretation and translation services for patients who speak limited English, as well as empowering patient care staff in 14 public health centers with resources such as language line telephones and interpreters. In addition, he is an area administrator for LACPH, part of a leadership team that oversees the administrative components of public health, including materials management; facilities planning; policy analysis; and finance.

-Joanie Harmon

Photo above: (L-R) Lola Goudeau (Class of ’02, M.P.A.); Barry Hunt, lecturer, Health Science;
Iris Baxter, assistant professor of public administration.