Page 210 - Cultural Competence in Health Education

188 Cultural Competence in Health Education and Health Promotion

the field. Most recently, AAHE has released a position statement on cultural competency

in health education (AAHE, 2006), which states that “ health educators must strive to
achieve cultural competency by understanding the meaning of culture, its complexity
within each group, and its effect on health decisions and practices ” (p. 1).

The Society for Public Health Education (SOPHE) has identified the elimination of
health disparities as one of its top three advocacy priorities for 2006. As part of these
efforts, two SOPHE journals, Health Education & Behavior and Health Promotion
Practice, published materials based on presentations at an invitational summit titled
Health Disparities and Social Inequities: Framing a Transdisciplinary Research Agenda
in Health Education. Articles from these journals are cited throughout this book. And
presentations to the SOPHE Web seminar titled “ On the Road from Research to Practice:
Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, ” have been made available on the
SOPHE Web site ( http://www.sophe.org ). Results from these seminars have yielded ten
consensus research questions to be addressed in the next decade (see Exhibit 10.1 ).

EXHIBIT 10.1. Consensus Questions from SOPHE Web Seminars.
1. How do economics and the built environment such as the availability of housing
and sidewalks affect health, and how can we encourage the urban design and
planning of communities to eliminate health disparities?
2. How does power operate in different social contexts to create and maintain
disparities?
3. What factors exist in certain populations that protect them from major health
issues; for example, what can we learn from African American female teens who
experience less drug abuse than other teens. How can health educators and society
promote such protective factors?
4. What is the impact of health literacy on health status, and how can we improve
message tailoring to reach different groups?
5. How can we culturally tailor interventions to infl uence access to health services?
6. How do we engage and partner with policy makers in diffusing relevant research?
7. What information are consumers getting on health, and how does this information
differ by race, ethnicity, socioeconomic, and cultural group?
8. Does engagement in community-based participatory research alter engagement in
community structures, processes, and other attributes?
9. How can we develop more evaluation instruments that assess dynamic, changing,
and social conditions such as social event history analysis?
10. How can we improve the measurement of both intended and unintended effects
and outcomes in evaluation studies?
Source: Gambescia et al., 2006.

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