Promoting Cultural Diversity: Strategies for Health Care Professionals

While we abhor bias, bigotry, and prejudice, such attitudes can and do influence our work. Increasingly, health care professionals practice in settings composed of ethnically, socially, and economically disparate populations. Promoting Cultural Diversity is an essential resource that offers techniques for understanding and appreciating human diversity in others. Kavanagh and Kennedy analyze the issues that surround cultural, gender, ideological, and experiential diversity, focus on communication skills and intervention strategies that are effective in situations characterized by diversity, present a repertoire of experiential strategies and aids for learning about diversity, and offer scenarios, collages, and extensive case studies to illustrate and encourage the analysis of real life situations. Promoting Cultural Diversity challenges students and professionals in nursing, counseling, clinical psychology, ethnic studies, social work, and health care to become increasingly sensitive and affirmative when dealing with a wide variety of people.