This article introduces the Major Contribution, which focuses on counseling psychologists' roles in addressing health disparities through culturally sensitive health care research and interventions. First, the authors provide a rationale for conducting research focused on culturally sensitive health care and then offer definitions of patient-centered culturally sensitive health care and related terms, drawing from both the health care and counseling psychology literatures. In addition, the authors address the broader question of how factors such as culturally sensitive health care influence health outcomes through an analysis of psychosocial mechanisms of health. Finally, the authors outline how counseling psychologists' expertise in a variety of areas can be applied to the medical field, and they briefly summarize progress that the field of counseling psychology has already made to this end.

This article presents an overview of the health disparities problem that exists among individuals from ethnic minority and low-income backgrounds and their majority counterparts. The argument is made that the involvement of counseling psychologists in addressing this health disparities problem presents an opportunity for the field to remain true to its commitment to prevention, multiculturalism, and social justice while becoming more competitive in the health care and health promotion fields. This article highlights the prevalence of health disparities and identifies the primary factors contributing to these disparities. In addition, the roles and approaches that counseling psychologists can adopt to help alleviate this problem are specified.

This article describes the literature-based, testable, formative Patient-Centered Culturally Sensitive Health Care Model that explains the associations between patient-centered culturally sensitive health care, health-promoting treatment behaviors, and health outcomes and statuses. An intervention program based on the model and its foundational research are also described. In addition, the article summarizes research concerning the ongoing evaluation of the model and the intervention program as well as the development of pilot inventories to assess patient-centered culturally sensitive health care in community-based primary care clinics.

In 2012, the Society of Counseling Psychology instituted the Leadership Academy (LA) to develop a pipeline of diverse leaders within the Society and the field of psychology. The present study aimed to: (a) better understand the retrospective perceived impact of the training on LA alumni, and (b) provide data about how LA alumni view their leadership development within the context of counseling psychology values. Fourteen LA alumni responded to a series of open-ended survey questions, and we examined the data through qualitative content analysis. Results yielded seven thematic categories: (a) Influences of the LA on Leadership Development and Leadership Skills, (b) Supports to Leadership Development, (c) Barriers to Leadership Development, (d) Greater Awareness of Diversity and Social Identities, (e) Growth Areas of the LA, (f) Personal Definition of Leadership, and (g) Leadership Attainment. Implications for leadership training programs are discussed.

While autoregulative adaptation is a common feature of living tissues, only a few feedback‐controlled adaptive biomaterials are available so far. This paper herein reports a new polymer hydrogel platform designed to release anti‐inflammatory molecules in response to the inflammatory activation of human blood. In this system, anti‐inflammatory peptide drugs, targeting either the complement cascade, a complement receptor, or cyclophilin A, are conjugated to the hydrogel by a peptide sequence that is cleaved by elastase released from activated granulocytes. As a proof of concept, the adaptive drug delivery from the gel triggered by activated granulocytes and the effect of the released drug on the respective inflammatory pathways are demonstrated. Adjusting the gel functionalization degree is shown to allow for tuning the drug release profiles to effective doses within a micromolar range. Feedback‐controlled delivery of covalently conjugated drugs from a hydrogel matrix is concluded to provide valuable safety features suitable to equip medical devices with highly active anti‐inflammatory agents without suppressing the general immunosurveillance.