Cultural Competency & Health Communication

Free, continuing education e-learning programs from the Office of Minority Health, designed to help health care workers provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services (CLAS).

This site, sponsored by the Office of Minority Health, offers the latest resources and tools to promote cultural and linguistic competency in health care. You may access free and accredited continuing education programs as well as tools to help you and your organization provide respectful, understandable and effective services.

Objectives and toolkits from the American Association of Colleges of Nursing for educating baccalaureate and graduate nursing students in culturally competent care.

The resources are available from the AETC-NMC Electronic Library as well as repository locations of our collaborative partners.

A Practical Guide to
Implementing the National
CLAS Standards: For Racial, Ethnic and Linguistic Minorities, People with Disabilities and
Sexual and Gender Minorities

Public and private sector organizations are involved in a number of activities that seek to reduce cultural and communication barriers to health care. These activities are often described as cultural competency and/or cross-cultural education. A recent Institute of Medicine report recommended that the health care system pursue several of these techniques as part of a multi-level strategy to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in medical care. To address this need, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation has developed a compendium, as a first attempt to describe these activities in a single document.

BE SAFE is a framework that uses culturally pluralistic content and perspectives based on these six core elements: Barriers to Care, Ethics, Sensitivity of the Provider, Assessment, Facts, and Encounters. The BESAFE series includes guides and promising practices that address cultural competency for specific racial/ethnic populations.