Cross Cultural Competency

Explore how immigrant diversity shapes health care and nutrition practice, and why professionals need a basic understanding of cultural backgrounds to tailor effective treatments.

Demographic shifts in the United States move toward a minority-majority by 2060, with Hispanics rising, prompting health care professionals to understand diverse patients to provide the best care.

Healthcare professionals must provide culturally competent care as patients with chronic conditions interact more with the system, because background, lifestyle, and culture shape information reception and adherence.

Develop cultural competency by examining your own beliefs and biases and how they shape patient care. Acknowledge both your beliefs and clients' cultural contexts to improve effectiveness and patient responses.

Develop cultural competency by understanding your own worldview, embracing differences, and building skills for cross-cultural communication that include reading nonverbal cues and body language.

Define culture as the sum of values, beliefs, languages, attitudes, behaviors, rituals, and customs that distinguish groups, learned and shared within social groups and transmitted non-genetically across generations.

Explain how contact between cultures forms a new composite culture, using Tex Mex as an example, and discuss dietary acculturation and its link to obesity and type two diabetes.

Explore how ethnicity classifies people by national origin and culture, highlighting the United States as a melting pot of ethnic groups—African-Americans, Native Americans, Asians, Europeans, and Hispanics—visible in appearance.

Avoid lumping people by appearance and ask for country of origin to respect Asia's diversity, recognizing multiple cultures, dialects, and dietary differences that cause mis diagnosis and ineffective treatment.

Examine race as a grouping based on physical features while recognizing cultures within each category, and avoid assumptions by asking questions and relying on facts for effective nutrition treatment.

Explore cultural diversity by comparing melting pot and salad bowl metaphors, and learn how health care professionals leverage knowledge of patients' cultural characteristics to provide effective, respectful treatment.

Develop culturally aware nutrition care by recognizing language needs, using interpreters accurately, respecting religious dietary restrictions and touch norms, and considering nonverbal cues and family structure.

Explore how food preserves cultural identity for immigrants, highlighting how availability in different areas shapes access to homeland dishes and how comfort foods evoke memories.

Examine how religion shapes diet, including Islam halal rules and Ramadan fasting, Judaism kosher laws, and Buddhist vegetarianism, and learn to tailor prescriptions within these restrictions.

Explain assimilation and acculturation by contrasting minority groups adopting majority cultures with evolving identities from prolonged cultural interaction. Show culture modification and psychological change over time, producing blended patterns.

Examine the pros and cons of acculturation, noting improved preventive health services and access to care alongside risks of obesity, fast food consumption, and reduced fruit and vegetable intake.

Examine how culture and lifestyle shape health disparities in immigrant diets. Compare first-generation and foreign-born adults, noting home-country foods and activity levels influence dietary patterns.

Immigrants stay true to cultural roots by maintaining food traditions from their homelands. Access to traditional foods varies by location, and online shopping bridges gaps in a global marketplace.

Clarify rice and beans by identifying specific varieties, such as black, brown, jasmine rice and pinto, kidney beans, across cultures to assess nutrition.

Discover how Chinese cuisine relies on fresh vegetables, steamed meals, and herbs while limiting dairy, using non-dairy calcium sources, and viewing food as medicine.

Explore Indian cuisine and its vegetarian foundations, featuring dal, lentils, roti, vegetables, and coconut milk, with tandoori chicken and goat meat as beef substitutes amid sacred cows.

Explore Ethiopian cuisine and dining practices, from injera flatbread and spicy stews to communal platters and right-hand eating. Learn how coffee ceremonies and caffeine influence dietary considerations.

Explore Latin American cuisine across countries, noting diverse bean varieties, meats like pork, chicken, and beef, and staples such as corn, beans, rice, and root vegetables including yams.

Explore how Caribbean cuisine blends colonial influences into staples like rice and beans, jerk dishes, and curries, with diverse island variations and emphasis on fiber and whole grains.

Tailor nutrition messages with nutrition education, dietary counseling, and intervention programs to fit cultural differences, demographic characteristics, psychological and environmental age attributes, and literacy for each patient group.

Reflect on how you and others from different cultures try to understand each other, assess how you come off, and examine the biases you bring to avoid stereotyping all clients.

Develop self-awareness of your own assumptions, define your personal culture from experience, and recognize that differences do not imply wrongness, fostering open-minded respect for diverse viewpoints.

Bridge the cultural divide by learning changing cultural demographics, respecting personal space, and building genuine trust through active listening and repeat-back communication.

Recognize that culture and heritage shape traditional practices and ancestral knowledge, while clients' experiences, values, and beliefs influence how they value us and trust us.

Develop cultural competency to respect diversity in health care, understand the practices, values, and beliefs of the families and communities we serve, and improve outcomes for patients.

Join the course on cross cultural competency as we say thank you for joining us today.