Cultural Responsiveness Training
Studies have shown that low health literacy affects roughly one third of all U.S. adults, but disproportionately affects racial and ethnic minority populations and people with lower socioeconomic status, which contributes to health inequities in these populations. Low health literacy is also worsened by unequal access to shared understanding of health information between minority patients and health professionals.
In Colorado, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed staggering health inequity gaps in disease burden, deaths, and vaccination coverage, reinforcing the existence of wide health inequity gaps long before the pandemic. Health education is effective in preparing historically underserved communities to autonomously make informed decisions about health and wellbeing. Culturally responsive patient engagement can leverage provider-patient interactions to increase health literacy, which could be an effective way to increase greater autonomy and self-efficacy around health decision-making that can reduce health disparities.
We see health professional cultural responsiveness training as the first step to improving provider interactions with historically underserved communities, as well as creating an enabling environment where the patient can learn and improve their health literacy.
Our training curriculum has been developed in partnership with community leaders, instructional design experts, and standardized patients, to ensure provider trainings are informed with authentic input from communities most affected by inequities in health.
Join our Training:
Our next cultural responsiveness training program is scheduled to begin on Saturday, February 24th, 2024. The training is FREE to trainees at this time. There is limited availability so interested health professionals should register by February 17th to join a community of health professionals committed to excellence in providing culturally responsive care in Colorado.
Trainee, Health Professional Cultural Responsiveness Training
I thought the event with the community members and actors was very very good - it was a really good balance of putting us on the spot to assess our ‘cultural responsiveness baseline’ skills, followed by a feedback session. It stuck with me.”