| Round 1 Grantees |
| Westside Health Services, Inc., New York |
| University of Southern California, California |
| University of California-Irvine, California |
| Yale University School of Medicine, Connecticut |
| Olive View-UCLA -DREW, California |
| Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island, Rhode Island |
| Choctaw Nation Health Services Authority, Oklahoma |
| Cooper Green Hospital, Alabama |
| Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgia |
| Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, Massachusetts |
| Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, Massachusetts |
| Round 2 Grantees |
|
Choctaw Nation Health Services Authority, Oklahoma
Choctaw Diabetes Disparity: Reduction by Improved Cultural Competence in Health Communications
From left to right—Back Row: Bea Parker, Margaret McKinney; Middle Row: Neil Henderson, Steve Young, Hampton Anderson, David Wharton; Front Row: Darlene Noahubi, Carrie Ward, Annette Choate, Del Powell, Carson Henderson
This intervention facilitates the ability of tribal Diabetes Educators and Community Health Representatives to 1) understand their patient’s cultural characteristics relative to diabetes, 2) elicit cultural beliefs and practices about diabetes, 3) acknowledge differences between medical models and personal models, 4) start a mutual search for points of connection across models so that provider-patient communications can be respectfully improved, 5) apply the new skills in the clinic and in the community, and 6) reduce disparities as a result of improved treatment adherence due to better communications of disease models between the health providers and the patients. This intervention elicits perceptions about disease and treatment leading to a negotiation process between the patient and provider. The negotiation process is a joint search for points of connection across professional and personal disease models. These connections are used to facilitate patients’ adoption of new health behaviors without denying their own originating cultural foundations. This initiative is based on prior research using a cultural construction of disease theoretical base that was done in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. It was discovered that alternative cultural models of diabetes were held within and across diabetic patients and health providers resulting in communication and adherence discordance. Emphasis is placed on the potential applicability to, and replicability in, other American Indian and minority populations.
Website:
http://www.choctawnation.com
http://www.ouhsc.edu
Contact:
L. Carson Henderson, PhD., MPH., RN (carson-henderson@ouhsc.edu) |
