Cultural Diversity and Healthcare

Learn about cultural differences that are important to providing quality healthcare.

Effective health communication is as important to health care as clinical skill. To improve individual health and build healthy communities, health care providers need to recognize and address the unique culture, language and health literacy of diverse consumers and communities. This site maintained by the US Department of Health and Human Services offers resources to facilitate such understanding.

This site maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services offers links to a wide variety of resources on multi-cultural issues.

Provides access to a variety of tools on ethical decision making in health care.

This site from the Minnesota Department of Health provides links to a variety of resources on cultural competence in health care.

The Commonwealth Fund tracks health insurance coverage, affordability, and health outcomes for Black, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander and Native Americans. We also highlight policies and practices needed to achieve an antiracist health system that helps people of color to thrive.

The Office of Minority Health is charged with protecting the health and well being of minorities in the United States.

"The EthnoMed site contains information about cultural beliefs, medical issues and other related issues pertinent to the health care of recent immigrants to Seattle or the US, many of whom are refugees fleeing war-torn parts of the world."

ExploreHealthCareers.org is a free, interactive health careers website designed to explain the array of health professions and provide easy access to students seeking information about health careers. This section of the site explores cultural diversity in health careers both in terms of employment and in terms of the patient.

Resources on disparities in health care from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

CCHCP serves as a bridge between communities and health care institutions to ensure full access to quality health care that is culturally and linguistically appropriate. Their web site provides access to a variety of resources.

A collection of web sites maintained by Ellen Bosman, a librarian at New Mexico State University, brings together a large collection of multicultural health resources.

This site from AARC provides links to a varitey of cultural diversity resources for health care providers.