Cultural Competence and Ethnic Diversity in Healthcare

Abstract

Summary: Today’s model of healthcare has persistent challenges with cultural competency, and racial, gender, and ethnic disparities. Health is determined by many factors outside the traditional healthcare setting. These social determinants of health (SDH) include, but are not limited to, education, housing quality, and access to healthy foods. It has been proposed that racial and ethnic minorities have unfavorable SDH that contributes to their lack of access to healthcare. Additionally, African American, Hispanic, and Asian women have been shown to be less likely to proceed with breast reconstructive surgery post-mastectomy compared to Caucasian women. At the healthcare level, there is underrepresentation of cultural, gender, and ethnic diversity during training and in leadership. To serve the needs of a diverse population, it is imperative that the healthcare system take measures to improve cultural competence, as well as racial and ethnic diversity. Cultural competence is the ability to collaborate effectively with individuals from different cultures; and such competence improves health care experiences and outcomes. Measures to improve cultural competence and ethnic diversity will help alleviate healthcare disparities and improve health care outcomes in these patient populations. Efforts must begin early in the pipeline to attract qualified minorities and women to the field. The authors are not advocating for diversity for its own sake at the cost of merit or qualification, but rather, these efforts must evolve not only to attract, but also to retain and promote highly motivated and skilled women and minorities. At the trainee level, measures to educate residents and students through national conferences and their own institutions will help promote culturally appropriate health education to improve cultural competency. Various opportunities exist to improve cultural competency and healthcare diversity at the medical student, resident, attending, management, and leadership levels. In this article, the authors explore and discuss various measures to improve cultural competency as well as ethnic, racial, and gender diversity in healthcare.

Emotional Health Work of Women With Female Genital Cutting Prior to Reproductive Health Care Encounters

“…Participants in the current study recognized this racism through their comments on the absence of Black professionals and information on Black populations in the reproductive health care context. This highlights the urgent need, already cited in the literature, for representation of diversity (Flores & Combs, 2013; Nair & Adetayo, 2019), as well as a focus on cultural competency (Johnson-Agbakwu et al, 2020; Johnson-Agbakwu & Manin, 2021) and structural determinants of health/health inequities (Crear-Perry et al, 2021) in health care education and delivery. Making space in professional roles for representation and implementing training that combats “racism, implicit bias, and microaggressions at the institutional as well as individual level” are only a few of many necessary components to work toward improved health care treatment of minority populations including women with female genital cutting (Johnson-Agbakwu et al, 2020, p. 2).…”

Gender of Award Recipients in Major Ophthalmology Societies

“…17 The disparity of women in leadership has previously Gender of Award Recipients in Major Ophthalmology Societies 21 been suggested to be due to the "pipeline effect", the idea that it will take several years for the young women who now make up over half of medical school classes to reach the highest levels of leadership and recognition. 33 That concept, however, has been called into question. 34 Studies have shown that men advance to full professor more quickly than women faculty, and that at the present rate, it will take another 120 years for women to be equally represented at the full professorship rank.…”

Gender and Racial Profile of the Academic Pediatric Faculty Workforce in the United States

“…Minority physicians ensure to provide culturally sensitive care to ethnically concordant patients and serve as mentors to minority medical students. Despite the recent augmented focus on increasing diversity, equity in academic medicine remains an elusive dream [2].…”