In your response posts offer strategies for how the cultural competence could have been increased in the program.
Post #1
Amanda Laramee
Cultural competency can be explained as the ability to understand and interact with people of all different cultures and beliefs, including ones different from their own (American Psychological Association, 2015). It is important for programs to be culturally competent because when designing a program to help everyone, the program could help different demographics potentially eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities (Georgetown University, n.d.). Cultural competence is an important aspect of healthcare programs.
In the article by Sidhu et. al (2015), researchers critiqued a program design and implementation for self-management to determine if the workers contributed to cultural competency using a qualitative approach. The healthcare program did adequately address cultural competency. For example, the program had English and non-English speaking educators for the program, as well as easy to understand explanations including visual pictures for topics of healthy food and meal planning, physical activity, and understanding how to prevent further chronic disease (Sidhu et. al, 2015). There were also limitations described by researchers, such as needing more training for the lay educators and financial barriers (Sindhu et. al, 2015). Overall, the program did as well as they could with the resources they had to work with.
References
American Psychological Association. (2015). In search of cultural competence. 46, 3.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2015/03/cultural-competence
Georgetown University. (n.d.). Cultural competence in health care: Is it important for people
with chronic conditions? Health Policy Institute. https://hpi.georgetown.edu/cultural/
Sidhu, M. S., Gale, N. K., Gill, P., Marshall, T., & Jolly, K. (2015). A critique of the design, implementation,
and delivery of a culturally-tailored self-management education intervention: a qualitative evaluation. BMC Health Services Research, 15, 54. https://doi-org.ezproxy.snhu.edu/10.1186/s12913-015-0712-8
Post #2
Rachel Watson
Cultural competence is essentially the ability to implement cognitive, affective and behavioral skills to create an understanding to interact and communicate with people across all cultures (University of Sidney, n.d.). Valuing and displaying a positive attitude towards diversity offers opportunities to effectively and ethically operate in multicultural communities. When looking at the self-management education program, the program adequately addressed cultural competence. For starters, the program identified a need to better address chronic disease prevalence particularly in minority-ethnic and socio-economically deprived populations and creating a program culturally-tailored to encourage behavior changes within these disparity-ridden communities (Sidhu, Gale, Gill, Marshall & Jolly, 2015). To achieve goals of improved disease education in at-risk populations, the program design was focused on communication strategies to develop trusting relationships and group-designs to better facilitiate the impact of illness (Sidhu, et al., 2015). To address cultural competence within the program, designers addressed lay person recruitment with ethnic considerations and the ability to address language concerns, as well as address cultural adaptations to better influence behaviors and beliefs surrounding culturally adaptable interventions for chronic disease management (Sidhu, et al., 2015).
The program focused on several strategies tailored to target the desired populations further tailored to target interventions designed for minority-ethnic communities. The education groups were broken down by language requirements, providing appropriate language services for non-English speaking participants and adequately supplying interpreters or bi-lingual educators to ensure appropriate relay of information for chronic disease management. Additionally, the program was designed in such a way to ensure the lay educators had a productive working relationship with interpreters and interpreters were ethically matched with patient participants to help eliminate perceived barriers and create an effective learning environment. The use of the social learning theory presented participants with an opportunity to learn by observing behaviors of others and being given the ability to evaluate the positive and negative effects of those behaviors, creating a more conducive learning environment by imitating attitudes, behaviors and emotional reactions (McLeod, 2016). The use of this theory and learning through environmental and observational learning processes helps support cultural competence by reducing the need for language and lectures and replacing with learned behaviors of visual aids and actions.
Rachel
References
McLeod, S. (2016). Albert Bandura | Social learning theory | Simply psychology. Study Guides for Psychology Students – Simply Psychology.
Sidhu, M. S., Gale, N. K., Gill, P., Marshall, T., & Jolly, K. (2015). A critique of the design, implementation, and delivery of a culturally-tailored self-management education intervention: A qualitative evaluation. BMC Health Services Research, 15(1).
University of Sidney. (n.d.). What is cultural competence? The University of Sydney.
