Existing health disparities and increasing social diversity, underscore the need for strategies to eliminate these disparities among racial and ethnic groups. While eradication of disparities will require multilevel interventions targeting social, healthcare and economic factors, one important strategy is increasing the skills of healthcare professionals in the areas of health disparities and cultural competency. Building on its existing work in cultural competency and addressing health disparities through the training of physicians from disadvantaged backgrounds, Howard University proposes the """"""""Project to Teach Cultural Competency in Healthcare"""""""". We propose to develop a curriculum in health disparities and cultural competency for medical students, residents, and practicing physicians, that will be implemented through the Howard University College of Medicine in conjunction with the Center to Improve Child Health Disparities that was funded by the National Center for Minority Health at Howard University, Department of Pediatrics, in 2002. We propose a multidisciplinary approach to curriculum development involving researchers in cultural competency and health disparities from Psychology, Communications, Social Work, and Medicine, as well as community representatives, curriculum specialists and program evaluators. Data from community focus groups on causes of health disparities will augment the curriculum development process. Diseases with the greatest disparities based on race and ethnicity-asthma, hypertension, obesity and sickle cell - will be emphasized. We will collaborate with the National Medical Association (NMA) to expand outreach to practicing physicians and award Continuing Medical Education credit. Program evaluation will include both process-oriented assessments and outcome variables that measure the impact on knowledge, skills, and attitudes of learners. This proposal describes plans to develop and implement the curriculum components, methods of instruction, and evaluation strategies over the five year grant. Included are plans to be a coordinating center.
