Page 136 - Cultural Competence in Health Education

114 Cultural Competence in Health Education and Health Promotion

health educators are faced with opportunities to interact with colleagues, clients, and
other people with cultural backgrounds similar to and different from their own. These
interactions will help individuals learn from each other as part of the process of achiev-
ing cultural competence, because learning from each other never ends. The more health
educators endeavor to seek out these encounters, the better equipped they will be to
provide programs to racial and ethnic groups (Luquis & P é rez, 2003).
Finally, cultural desire is the genuine motivating force that makes one want to
work with people from diverse cultural backgrounds (Campinha - Bacote, 1998, 2007).
Health educators who have cultural awareness, knowledge, skill, and encounters must
also develop a true motivation to work with people from different racial and ethnic
backgrounds (Campinha - Bacote, 1999, 2001). Cultural desire is not something that
can be taught in a classroom but something that health educators must have within
themselves or develop during their journey toward becoming culturally competent.
They must be inspired to work within a multicultural society. Health educators who
“ want to ” (as Campinha - Bacote, 1999, says) and who have the desire to work with
racial and ethnic populations are doing a good service not only to the community they
serve but also to the profession.
In addition to this model of cultural competence, Campinha - Bacote (1998) devel-
oped the Inventory for Assessing the Process of Cultural Competence Among Health-
care Professionals (IAPCC). In 2003, she revised this instrument (IAPCC - R) in order

to add the construct of cultural desire. A sum of the scores of the five subscales shows

whether a health professional is operating at a level of cultural proficiency (91 to 100),
cultural competence (75 to 90), cultural awareness (51 to 74), or cultural incompetence
(25 to 50). Higher scores represent a higher level of competence.
Although the process of cultural competence model and the IAPCC - R were devel-
oped to be used with health care professionals, other health professionals can use them
to understand the complexity of cultural competence and measure individuals ’ level of
cultural competence. Luquis and P é rez (2005) used a modified version of the IAPCC - R

to measure the level of cultural competence among professional health educators. For

their study, they defined the levels of cultural competence used in the IAPCC - R as they
apply to the field of health education:

Culturally incompetent individuals can be described as those who lack an under-
standing of the difference among ethnic and cultural groups. They are at the lowest
level of the cultural competence process. As they move through this process, the indi-
vidual develops cultural awareness, or sensitivity to the values, beliefs and practices
of different ethnic and cultural groups. Culturally competent individuals are not only
culturally sensitive to the different groups, but are also able to respond appropriately
to the needs of these groups. Finally, cultural proficiency can be described as the end-

point of cultural competence. An individual who is culturally competent has devel-
oped the ability to respond appropriately to groups of diverse ethnic and cultural
backgrounds [p. 159].

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