Ensuring Cultural Competence

As our population becomes more diverse, it is vital that individuals, organizations, communities, and healthcare providers understand the needs and ways of other cultures.

Resources for Cultural Competency

In order to increase your cultural competency, visit the resources below to find information that may help you, individuals in your organization, or the healthcare professionals with whom you work.

Advancing Effective Communication, Cultural Competence, and Patient-and Family-Centered Care: A Roadmap for Hospitals is a monograph published by the Joint Commission to help hospitals integrate communication, cultural competence, and patient- and family-centered care into their organizations.

Agency for Health Research and Quality: Conoce las Preguntas is a multimedia Spanish-language campaign encouraging Hispanics to get more involved in their health care and to talk with their doctors about their medical concerns. The campaign offers tips to help Hispanics prepare for medical appointments, lists of questions to consider asking their doctors, and 15- and 30-second public service announcements.

Agency for Health Research and Quality: Health Care Innovations Exchange - Honing Cultural and Linguistic Competence features innovative programs and quality tools for improving cultural and linguistic competence as well as reducing health care disparities for vulnerable populations, including racial and ethnic minorities.

American Academy for Family Physicians provides a video series for cultural competence entitled: Quality Care for Diverse Populations.

Health Resources and Services Administration provides resources for organizations to help improve health communication and cultural competency programs and includes guides for particular populations.

Genetic Counseling Cultural Competence Toolkit is a website and resource portal designed to provide information on demand to members of the genetic counseling profession, students, and other interested health care providers and consumers. The website includes links and information on various topics in cultural diversity and cultural and linguistic competence that can be applied to genetic counseling clinical practice, research, and teaching.

National Center for Cultural Competence provides organizations with the resources to increase the capacity of health care and mental health programs to design, implement and evaluate the competency of linguistic and cultural services to promote health and improve outcomes for all.

Office of Minority Health publishes a comprehensive site of cultural competency resources and guidelines for organizations.

DiversityRx Your Voice Project

For newcomers and experts in the field of cross cultural health care, there are a wide variety of online resources to help people design, implement and assess interventions and programs for culturally diverse populations. On November 16, 2010, DiversityRX Your Voice Project hosted a free webinar, entitled Mining the Web: Useful Internet Resources on Health, Culture and Diversity, focusing on using the internet to find resources on health, culture, and diversity. The webinar incorporated a tour of new and well-established websites that feature resource databases, multimedia tools, online courses, translated materials, and opportunities for networking and peer education.

The program was moderated by health information specialist Siobhan Champ-Blackwell of the National Network of Libraries of Medicine and began with the newly revamped DiversityRx.org website. The following websites explored focused on on health equity, cultural competence practice innovations, standards for hospitals and other health organizations, and more. More information may be found on the DiversityRx Your Voice Project website.