Prioritizing and measuring social awareness within cultural competence education: An act to mitigate health disparities

Abstract

As the population of the United States is diversifying, the prevalence of cross-cultural scenarios in healthcare is increasing. Cross-cultural healthcare interactions contribute to health disparities among underrepresented populations. Cultural competence education is an identified strategy to mitigate these health disparities. Awareness remains a central construct in many frameworks to mitigate health disparities. Therefore, the problem that was addressed by this study was the identified need to promote awareness in physical therapy programs as a strategy to mitigate health disparities among underrepresented populations. The purpose of this quantitative pre-test, post-test quasi-experimental study was to measure Doctor of Physical Therapy students’ social awareness before and after completing an awareness-based educational module. The results of this study indicate that an awareness-based module did not impact Doctor of Physical Therapy students’ eight forms of social awareness. However, there were significant changes in some between and within-group comparisons for six forms of social awareness.