173728 Investigating the impact cultural incompetence has on African American women's ability to seek and receive adequate healthcare in the United States

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Angela Johnson, MPPA , Center for Community Based Health Disparities, My Brother's Keeper, Incorporated, Ridgeland, MS
Mark A. Colomb, PhD, CRA , CBA 2 Project, My Brother's Keeper, Incorporated, Ridgeland, MS
Natille Duncan, MSEd, MIT , The CBA 2 Project, My Brother's Keeper, Incorporated, Ridgeland, MS
Issues:

Cultural incompetence continues to impede healthcare worker's capacity to eliminate boundaries that hinder African American women's ability to seek and receive adequate healthcare in the United States.

Description:

This poster will focus on a new and innovative one-day, intensive, interactive, skills building course entitled “African American Cultural Competence to Eliminate Health Disparities”. This course is designed to provide community health workers with the necessary skills needed to recognize health-related beliefs and practices of African American women to improve the quality of services they deliver. The roundtable discussion will center on gaining cultural competence through a developmental process that ranges from cultural destructiveness to cultural proficiency.

Lessons Learned:

The skills building course “African American Cultural Competence to Eliminate Health Disparities” has been delivered to 15 community health organizations in 3 states. Quantitative cumulative evaluation data indicated 80% of the participants strongly agreed that their awareness about cultural competence had increased due to the course and 95% planned to utilize the skills learned in this course to develop more culturally sensitive approaches to healthcare. The evaluation data also revealed that 87.5% of the participants strongly agreed that they would apply the cultural competence skills in their healthcare organizations within the next three months.

Recommendations:

Utilizing a developmental approach to building cultural competence in healthcare workers is recommended as one of the most effective means to eliminating health disparities among African American women.

Learning Objectives:
1. To understand the vital role cultural competence plays in reducing healthcare disparities among African American women. 2. To recognize how differences in culture can significantly impact how African American women seek and receive healthcare services. 3. To acknowledge how one's own cultural beliefs may impact the quality of healthcare services provided to African American women.

Keywords: Access to Health Care, Cultural Competency

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I provide culturally competent training to organizations who provide services to African American women in the United States.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

See more of: Black Caucus of Health Workers: Student Poster Session
See more of: Black Caucus of Health Workers