Federal government websites often end in. The site is secure. Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October Learn More or Try it out now. Cultural competence training has been criticized for reinforcing existing stereotypes, ignoring intersectionality and inadvertently marginalizing some individuals and groups. In contrast, cultural humility offers the possibility of transformational learning, requiring individuals to pursue a lifelong course of self-examination.
This approach makes authentic engagement with others possible. We review the premises underlying cultural competence and cultural humility, as well as proposed models for the integration of cultural humility into the clinical context. We propose a new model for the integration of cultural humility into clinical research: CARE, signifying C uriosity, A ttentiveness, R espect and R esponsiveness, and E mbodiment.
We conclude that the concept of cultural humility can be integrated into the conduct of clinical research. The concept of cultural competence first gained prominence in the United States during the s as an approach to addressing diversity and inequalities [ 1 , 2 ]. It was seen as a potential strategy that could be used to bridge differences that existed between middle-class, often white biomedical clinicians and their patients, whose language and experiences frequently differed from those of their clinicians [ 3 ].
Cultural competence pedagogies often assumed that difficulties bridging such gaps were attributable to a lack of knowledge on the part of the clinicians and that these gaps could be remedied through the provision of information about other cultural groups [ 4 ]. As such, cultural competence was seen as a tool that would permit an individual or system to better address the needs of their patients or clients who were perceived to be different in some way.
Early definitions of cultural competence tended to view cultures as static and monolithic, reifying and essentializing groups [ 1 , 2 , 5 , 6 , 7 ] rather than recognizing that culture is actively produced through a social process [ 8 ]. More recent definitions focus not only on knowledge, but also on attitudes and behaviors [ 9 , 10 ].
