Page 82 - Cultural Competence in Health Education

60 Cultural Competence in Health Education and Health Promotion
professional and those who are being served when there is a high degree of commu-
nity engagement and empowerment aimed at maximizing the use of available resources
in a concordant environment. Trust or connectedness is evidenced by the use of kin-
ship terms and by efforts to find familiar ways to assist and reinforce survival skills.

Culturally competent health professionals recognize the role and recognition of elders
in the family and in the community. The “ grandmother ” in one family may also be the
community ’ s “ matriarch. ” Before a family or community can strategize with a health
professional to keep kids off the street, in school, employed, or volunteering, that fam-
ily or community must trust the health professional to know and understand the spe-
cific characteristics, needs, and interests of the community being served.

Credibility. A limited sample study conducted by Price and Sidani (2007) asked a

group of 200 health clinic patients to identify their preferred characteristics in a clinic
health educator. The results failed to show a preference toward race, age, or gender.
Rather, a majority in this group believed that a health educator should be a healthy role
model. Such a role model is one who does not smoke, has girth control, and practices
those behaviors that lead to a higher quality of life. Having visual (looking the part),
professional (having been trained and being knowledgeable), and practical (living the

role) credibility is essential in influencing others to adopt what the health educator
wants them to do.
By experiencing growth and progression toward cultural competence and by
acquiring and expressing trust, sensitivity, and credibility, health educators are able to
advance in attaining the professional capacities supported by AAHE. More specifi -
cally, health educators are expected to have the capacity to communicate respect, to
personalize knowledge, to display empathy, to be nonjudgmental, to be flexible in dif-

ferent roles, to demonstrate reciprocal concern, and to tolerate ambiguity (AAHE,
1994, p. 11).

THE COUNSELING ROLE IN HEALTH EDUCATION
There is a strong counseling component in the professional role of the health educator.
Thus training for cultural competence centers on the roles of the health educator as a
multicultural counselor for dissimilar others. Atkinson et al. (1993) enumerate three
factors to consider in selecting an appropriate counseling role. The first factor is iden-

tification of the locus of problem etiology. The second factor is acculturation. The
third factor is the goals of counseling. An exploration of these three factors helps
health educators to understand the different roles that they must play when counseling
others from a different culture and when counseling others from a similar culture.

Etiology. The impact of the locus of problem etiology may differ with a group ’ s
culture. For some groups, if the problem is external then the resolution may be seen as
beyond group members ’ control or as environmental. Atkinson uses the example of an
American from an Asian group who may feel insecure about his new management role

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