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Chapter 55 - Cultural competence and health literacy

from Section IV - Principles of care for the elderly

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2016

By
Gwen Yeo ,
Joanne G. Schwartzberg  and
Stacy Cooper Bailey
Edited by
Jan Busby-Whitehead ,
Christine Arenson ,
Samuel C. Durso ,
Daniel Swagerty ,
Laura Mosqueda ,
Maria Fiatarone Singh  and
William Reichel
Jan Busby-Whitehead
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina
Christine Arenson
Affiliation:
Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia
Samuel C. Durso
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Daniel Swagerty
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Laura Mosqueda
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
Maria Fiatarone Singh
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
William Reichel
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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Summary

Person-centered geriatric care requires attention to the diversity of older patients. The looming ethnogeriatric imperative, when 40% of geriatric patients will be from a minority population, will require health care organizations and providers to meet elders’ unique cultural needs. These include meeting the Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Standards (CLAS), especially providing language access for elders with limited English proficiency; developing cultural humility and confronting unconscious bias; knowing major health beliefs, special health risks, and the cohort experiences of elders of different populations; and using culturally appropriate assessment techniques, including eliciting elders’ explanatory models of their conditions. Older adults are also more likely to have low health literacy or to experience challenges obtaining, processing, or comprehending health information. As low health literacy has been linked to poor health outcomes, geriatric providers must develop skills to ensure they understand their patients and that their patients understand them
Type
Chapter
Information
Reichel's Care of the Elderly
Clinical Aspects of Aging
 , pp. 735 - 748
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2016

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