Effectiveness of Culturally Tailored Interventions for Chronic Illnesses among Ethnic Minorities

Abstract

Culturally tailored interventions have been applied to provide benefits to ethnic minorities’ care; however, the effectiveness of these interventions for chronic conditions is mixed. This systematic review of systematic reviews critically evaluates recent evidence of the effects that culturally tailored interventions have on health care outcomes among ethnic minorities with chronic conditions. It synthesizes results of eight English-language systematic reviews published between 2010 and 2018 and identifies four health care outcomes common to the reviews: disease knowledge, objective clinical outcomes, satisfaction, and access. Our findings suggest that culturally tailored interventions can contribute to the improvement of ethnic minorities’ health care outcomes and especially improve patients’ satisfaction with care. However, results overall are mixed. Further studies to better understand the value of culturally tailored interventions for ethnic minorities’ care are needed.

Culturally tailored lifestyle interventions for the prevention and management of type 2 diabetes in adults of Black African ancestry: a systematic review of tailoring methods and their effectiveness

“…In contrast to Attridge et al (2014) who reported sustained improvement up to 24 months of follow-up, this review found short-term improvement prevalent up to 8 months (19) , but these effects on glycaemic control did not persist significantly at 12 or 24 months. A recent systematic review reported findings that the use of culturally tailored interventions for chronic disease management contributed to improvement in all healthcare outcomes, but that overall results were mixed (38) . This outcome was seen in our study, where six articles reported non-significant improvement in HbA1c for the intervention compared with the control.…”

Culturally tailored interventions for ethnic minorities: A scoping review

“…Studies indicated that the lack of practical guidelines were obstacles for healthcare providers (Coleman & Angosta, 2017 ; Ogbolu et al, 2018 ). Similarly, several studies reported that a lack of clinical practical guidelines for culturally competent care (Joo & Liu, 2020 ; Marion et al 2016 ). Clear, evidence‐based practical manuals are needed to improve the practices of nurses and other healthcare providers.…”

“…Increasing the evidence of intervention dosage and connecting that evidence to patients' outcomes can improve the overall evidence base of research and ensure high quality of health care (Sidani et al, 2010). However, studies in this review reported that lack of process measuring was a barrier (Alia et al 2015;Allen et al 2019;Gonyea et al, 2016;Huang & Garcia, 2018;Joo & Liu, 2020). Developing reliable and validated tools to measure culturally tailored interventions is therefore recommended.…”

“…These populations are often underserved by healthcare systems because of economic and language barriers, meaning they frequently experience low‐quality care (Torres‐Ruiz et al 2018 ). One consequence of the combination of increasing minority populations and persistently bad care is that the number of high‐risk patients—patients who typically experience high individual healthcare costs and economic losses (Joo & Liu, 2020 )—in minority populations is increasing. One promising way to improve healthcare equity and quality for minority populations is by employing culturally tailored interventions (Torres‐Ruiz et al 2018 ).…”

“…One promising way to improve healthcare equity and quality for minority populations is by employing culturally tailored interventions (Torres‐Ruiz et al 2018 ). Culturally tailored interventions have been shown promising care coordination that improving access to healthcare systems and clinical outcomes to ethnic minorities (Joo, 2014 ; Joo & Liu, 2020 ; Torres‐Ruiz et al 2018 ).…”