This project will support annual meetings of the National Consortium for Multicultural Education for Health Professionals (Consortium), enhance the collaborative network, and optimize the Consortium's impact. Initially funded in 2004 by NHLBI/NIH as a competitive five-year training award program (K07) for U.S. medical schools, the Consortium uses the approach of addressing disparities by integrating cross-cultural education into health professional training. The 18 schools in the Consortium are in different stages of implementation, with the funding for the first wave ending in 2009. Consortium members engage individually and collectively in curriculum development, implementation, evaluation in health professional education, and dissemination of curriculum to health professionals. Consortium annual program meetings, to date, have resulted in success in collaborative projects, surveys and in identification of research gaps. The Consortium has provided enhanced support for individual educators, and expanded the scope of impact of their individual work. Two-thirds of PIs participated in multi-site studies with other Consortium members, one solution to some of the challenges of institutional implementation. These findings underscore the value of continuing our annual Consortium meetings. One central longitudinal theme of the proposed meetings will be to identify strategies to generate practice-based research that will assist educators and practitioners in assessing and linking patient-centered outcomes. The first three annual meetings will focus on under-addressed areas in cultural competency education (as generated by another collaborative project): health disparities (2010), community strategies (2011), bias and stereotyping (2012). The last two years will focus on reflective practice (2013), and health systems change and inter-professional training (2014). Emphasis will be paid to discussions on sustainability, and centered on patient outcomes in chronic disease. Each of the annual meetings will be a two-day meeting, with the second day devoted to a skills-building workshop. Topics for skill-building workshops will be further refined based upon needs assessments from previous years. Systematic reviews will be written in the fifth year based on literature reviews and discussion.
Increasing recognition of well-documented disparities in health status, access and service delivery have fueled calls to better prepare future health professionals to address these challenges. There is a paucity of research that links successful outcomes of health professions education to patient-centered outcomes. These meetings will help identify strategies in assessing and linking patient-centered outcomes to education.
| Goode, Tawara D; Carter-Pokras, Olivia D; Horner-Johnson, Willi et al. (2014) Parallel tracks: reflections on the need for collaborative health disparities research on race/ethnicity and disability. Med Care 52:S3-8 |
| Lie, Désirée; Carter-Pokras, Olivia; Braun, Bonnie et al. (2012) What do health literacy and cultural competence have in common? Calling for a collaborative health professional pedagogy. J Health Commun 17 Suppl 3:13-22 |
