Kristie Wyatt, MPH
UNC Greensboro School of Health and Human Sciences
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Cultural Competency
Cultural competency is a crucial skill for public health professionals and is a pillar for reducing disparities through culturally sensitive and unbiased quality care.
Reflection
There is a strong need for culturally relevant health programming and research in public health. Consider the potential implications of a children’s nutrition class that fails to include cultural and ethnic foods that the child is familiar with from home. In this example the lack of cultural competence and sensitivity could easily result in some of the children being unable to practice the tools they learned in the program, due to a lack of relevance.
After growing up in a homogeneous mid-western town, I have been working with diverse communities for most of my adult life and I believe that being surrounded by diversity brings richness of perspective, innovation, and relationships. I am a firm believer of "showing up". To me, this means that I go to where my clients are. I show them by my presence that I believe what they say is valuable, and that they are the experts of their own experience. During my years as a Wellness Education Coordinator I frequently sought out professional development that would help me to critically reflect on how my own cultural background informs my ideologies and understanding of historical, social, and cultural contexts surrounding diversity. I wanted to know how these understandings could inform my ability to work with marginalized communities. One of my most enriching professional development experiences include an elective course I took in the MPH program: Culturally Responsive Leadership (ELC 616).
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Two of my key takeaways from this class were also common themes in the program overall: 1) communities and individuals are the best experts on themselves and must be included in the decision making that affects them and 2) communication must be accessible and relevant to the audience. In Health Policy we learned about the importance of understanding the literacy level of the community, which we put into practice by developing infographics on the relationship between soda consumption and health. In Community Health Assessment (HEA)In my professional life, this was emphasized at a workshop I attended in 2018: Healing from Multiple Traumas: LGBT People of Color & Sexual Violence. I
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UNC Greensboro Elective ELC 616 - Culturally Responsive Leadership, 2017
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The importance of ommunication
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Evidence of Competency
Background
While I was the sole provider of sexual and gender based violence prevention and response at Guilford College, my office was located in a space perceived as inaccessible to students of color due to its physical location (Student Conduct). I was able to determine almost all students seeking services were from heterosexual white women, which was not representative of our community, or local violence reporting estimates provided by the Family Justice Center. My goal was to identify and remove whatever barrier(s) was causing this discrepancy.
Methods
Once I made the observation, I manually added demographic information from our Banner system and compared it to the records of students receiving services. I then consulted with students and colleagues to gather more perspective on how to meet the needs of underrepresented groups on campus. Our top strategy was to physically remove this barrier by moving my office. After consulting with the Facilities department and considering several locations, we finally settled on a space formerly occupied by Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies interns in the Multicultural Education Department.
Results
This change led to reports from students of color and LGBTQIA students increasing quickly. Foot traffic and student involvement in prevention programming immediately began to shift to more accurately represent the demographics of the campus population.
King Hall
Central location of Wellness Education Services in the Multicultural Education Department
