Cultural Humility Interventions

Improving Structural Competency Within Health Care Settings

Family planning providers can play a key role in bringing out institutional change by implementing policies and procedures that improve structural competency. This includes addressing unconscious and conscious racial bias and discrimination, on-going/continuing education requirements for medical professionals and other staff members, recruitment and retention strategies for inclusive staffing at all levels, DEI trainings and antiracist practices, and provider training in interpersonal skills and cultural competency.

Examples of Organizations and Interventions

• Review NFPRHA Racial and Reproductive Justice resources to access trainings and additional resources.
• The World Health Organization (WHO) created a health promotion guide for increasing community engagement. This guide includes an overview of the types of community engagement approaches and a checklist to improve engagement strategies: Community engagement: a health promotion guide for universal health coverage in the hands of the people.
• Using a reproductive justice approach, cultural humility can be used to center the patient needs based on their values, which aim to increase bodily autonomy. This article examines cultural humility models and how to implement health care strategies that best supports the patient: True Choice in Reproductive Care: Using Cultural Humility and Explanatory Models to Support Reproductive Justice in Primary Care[i].
• Learn more about Seattle Children’s Hospital’s Health Equity and Anti-Racism Action Plan (HEAR), which reviews its 5-year action plan to address racism and health disparities.
• The CDC has created a Sexual Health Cultural Competence Resources page for providers and organizations that may serve culturally diverse communities. This resource guide includes a self-assessment check list, front desk assistance, and guide to adapting culturally and linguistically competent health promotion materials.
• “Is Implicit Bias Training Effective?” is a report developed by the National Institutes of Health to discuss how implicit bias training alone does not eradicate bias; however, they must be paired with a comprehensive institutional strategy for change.

Workforce Retention, Recruitment, and Environment

Workforce retention, recruitment, and environment affect the safety and support of all staff and people seeking care. All institutions should focus on a recruitment and retention plan for BIPOC and LGBTQ+ staff, provide inclusive hiring practices for all levels of staff and providers, and provide hiring incentives for multilingual staff and providers.

Examples of Organizations and Interventions

• Anti-Racist Hiring & Supervision Practices
• Recommendations for Recruitment and Retention of a Diverse Workforce: A Report from the Field
• It is important for all family planning providers to take the lead on Confronting Racism in Health Care, and this article discusses how organizations must examine their institutional policies, train all staff including leadership in anti-racism policies, and develop and create relationships with Black and other-minority businesses within the community.
• The American Health Association created a tool called “Driving Health Equity in the Workplace” to ensure that the workplace is a safe and supportive place for all employees.
• Transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) people face various health inequities due to bias and discrimination. To reduce health disparities, the Human Rights Campaign created a guide called “Transgender-Inclusive Benefits for Employees and Dependents” to support TGNC employees and their dependents.
   

Inclusive Health Care Settings

Examples of Organizations and Interventions

• Planned Parenthood of the Southern Finger Lakes created a guide to improve health care services for transgender patients: Providing Transgender-Inclusive Healthcare Services.
• Creating an Inclusive Environment for LGBT Patients is a guide created by the National LGBT Health Education Center to improve institutional policies for LGBTQ+ patients.
• See: Religious communities
• See: Interventions by population