Teaching Culturally Sensitive Care to Dental Students: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Dental schools must prepare future dentists to deliver culturally sensitive care to diverse patient populations, but there is little agreement on how best to teach these skills to students. This article examines this question by exploring the historical and theoretical foundations of this area of education in dentistry, analyzes what is needed for students to learn to provide culturally sensitive care in a dental setting, and identifies the discipline-specific skills students must master to develop this competence. The problems associated with single-discipline, lecture-based approaches to teaching culturally sensitive care are outlined, and the advantages of an interdisciplinary, patient-centered, skills-based approach to teaching culturally sensitive care are described. The authors advocate for an approach to teaching culturally sensitive care that builds upon learning in the behavioral sciences, ethics, and public health. Component skills and perspectives offered by each of these curriculum areas are identified, and their contributions to the teaching of culturally sensitive care are described. Finally, the need to consider the timing of this instruction in the dental curriculum is examined, along with instructional advantages associated with an approach that is shared by faculty across the curriculum

Methods used in cross-culturalcomparisons of vasomotor symptoms and their determinants

Methodological differences among studies of vasomotor symptoms limit rigorous comparison or systematic review. Vasomotor symptoms generally include hot flushes and night sweats although other associated symptoms exist. Prevalence rates vary between and within populations, but different studies collect data on frequency, bothersomeness, and/or severity using different outcome measures and scales, making comparisons difficult. We reviewed only cross-cultural studies of menopausal symptoms that explicitly examined symptoms in general populations of women in different countries or different ethnic groups in the same country. This resulted in the inclusion of nine studies: Australian/Japanese Midlife Women's Health Study (AJMWHS), Decisions At Menopause Study (DAMeS), Four Major Ethnic Groups (FMEG), Hilo Women's Health Survey (HWHS), Mid-Aged Health in Women from the Indian Subcontinent (MAHWIS), Penn Ovarian Aging Study (POAS), Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN), Women's Health in Midlife National Study (WHiMNS), and Women's International Study of Health and Sexuality (WISHeS). These studies highlight the methodological challenges involved in conducting multi-population studies, particularly when languages differ, but also highlight the importance of performing multivariate and factor analyses. Significant cultural differences in one or more vasomotor symptoms were observed in 8 of 9 studies, and symptoms were influenced by the following determinants: menopausal status, hormones (and variance), age (or actually, the square of age, age2), BMI, depression, anxiety, poor physical health, perceived stress, lifestyle factors (hormone therapy use, smoking and exposure to passive smoke), and acculturation (in immigrant populations). Recommendations are made to improve methodological rigor and facilitate comparisons in future cross-cultural menopause studies

Reflecting on Modern Public-School Teacher Experience: An Overview of Select Challenges Facing the Educator Workforce with an Emphasis on Teachers of Color

New demographic research shows that the school-aged population in the U.S. is rapidly diversifying in terms of student racial and ethnic identity. However, as the educator workforce also diversifies, teachers of color are less likely than White teachers to remain in the profession and persist at their current school. This backgrounder reviews a growing body of research outlining the multiple social and academic benefits associated with increasing diversity in the educator workforce. In addition, research on school working conditions, with a specific focus on accountability reforms and practices, and its impact on the retention of teachers of color is discussed. The backgrounder concludes by framing additional areas of research related to the current experiences of teachers and the workforce.Educatio

“Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This research, however, cannot determine whether the uniformity results from universal patterns of human behavior or from the limited cultural variation available among the university students used in virtually all prior experimental work. To address this, we undertook a cross-cultural study of behavior in ultimatum, public goods, and dictator games in a range of small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of economic and cultural conditions. We found, first, that the canonical model – based on self-interest – fails in all of the societies studied. Second, our data reveal substantially more behavioral variability across social groups than has been found in previous research. Third, group-level differences in economic organization and the structure of social interactions explain a substantial portion of the behavioral variation across societies: the higher the degree of market integration and the higher the payoffs to cooperation in everyday life, the greater the level of prosociality expressed in experimental games. Fourth, the available individual-level economic and demographic variables do not consistently explain game behavior, either within or across groups. Fifth, in many cases experimental play appears to reflect the common interactional patterns of everyday life