Assessing the quality of cultural competence training – what are the markers of an effective program, and is it time for a national standard or other rating system?

Diana M. Carr, MA is a Medical Anthropologist and Senior Cultural and Linguistic Services Specialist at Health Net of California.  Ms Carr has been with Health Net of California for over seven years.   Ms. Carr holds a Master of Art’s degree in anthropology and is a medical anthropologist whose area of specialization is non-western health care and ethnopharmacology.  Dissertation fieldwork was conducted in an indigenous community and focused on non-literate means of learning and transferring medical knowledge.   She has twelve years experience teaching anthropology and cultural awareness at local universities.   
Ms Carr has worked on health plan collaborations to produce cultural sensitivity and responsive guidance documents for health plan staff, providers and physicians.  The Industry Collaborative Effort (ICE) has produced “Better Communication, Better Care: Provider Tools to Care for Diverse Populations.”  This booklet contains documents to guide cross-cultural communication and increase cultural responsiveness in a clinical setting.  Ms Carr has developed cultural competency training programs that are used to educate health plan staff and providers.  She has developed evaluation criteria to evaluate vendor produced cultural competency programs for use with health plan staff and contracted physicians.  Based on observations and evaluations of vendor produced cultural competency training programs, Ms Carr has identified several drawbacks that exist in many of these programs.  Key among the drawbacks is the definition and use of the term ‘culture’, ‘cultural competency’ and over generalizations of culture groups.  In-group variation is often sacrificed to facilitate a discussion of group similarities.   
As a medical anthropologist working in the private sector, Ms Carr has spoken at many national conferences on the application of anthropological concepts in the private sector and in particular, to cultural competency training programs.  Ms. Carr also has extensive background in anthropological linguistics and studies on the transmission of culturally based or group held information through language.