Cross-Cultural Communication Competency for Health Care Providers Toolkit

Note: This toolkit reflects its author’s perspectives solely. It does not reflect opinions of Public Health Liberation, its Board, or members.

Developed by P.S. Perkins

The Human Communication Institute seeks to provide a praxis for community health that reaches beyond quantitative studies and formulas in a manner that listens, engages, understands and includes the health concerns of silenced community members. The Cross-Cultural Communication Competency for Health Care Providers toolkit seeks to broaden the cultural awareness of practitioners and advocates concerning interfacing and providing care for “other”. Language as a tool is the primary determinant of how an individual seeks, recognizes and engages in their personal care. It is that same tool that health care providers use to understand and support their patients and communities into their desired wellness. The need to transcend language barriers is not just a matter of differing “tongues” but issues that include social reality, semantics, denotative and connotative uses, cultural paradigms of health and healing, formality, mistrust, gender diversity and many other concerns. Health care providers have a massive job to penetrate the mental residue of patients as well as their own depending on training and practical contact. Much of “mental residue” of patients and practitioners as they come together, are words, concepts and experiences handed down anecdotally or experientially for generations.

“We are all residents of our residue.” HCI

Understanding the need to learn, understand and incorporate cross-cultural messaging and practices into patient-provider relationships is foundational to improving community health. In the Public Health Liberation Praxis Terms, we introduced concepts that encourage furtherance of cross-cultural communication studies and practices that dig deeper into knowing and serving the community.

Note the following: Environmental Conditioning – How the environment plays a dominant role in the Public Health conversation and debate as a primary determinant of individual and collective emotional, mental and physical health of marginalized communities. Conditioning mainly occurs through the messages, experiences, behaviors communicated to and around them.