Cultivating Cultural Competency: A pathway to equity in health..

Discrimination in healthcare is not just an abstract concept; it has tangible and far-reaching consequences for individuals and communities. It undermines the principles of fairness and justice that should underpin healthcare systems, leading to disparities in access to care, misdiagnoses, and suboptimal health outcomes. Imagine being a patient whose symptoms are dismissed because of their cultural background or language barrier, leading to a delayed diagnosis and worsening health outcomes.

Over the past decade, a rapidly expanding body of literature has demonstrated the existence of disparities in health and healthcare. The need for change is clear, and one proposed solution that could gain lots of traction is mandatory cultural competency training for healthcare providers.

Cultural competence in healthcare is defined as the ability of providers and organizations to effectively deliver healthcare services that meet the social, cultural, and linguistic needs of patients (García-Izquierdo, I., & Montalt, V. 2022).