Pathways to Culture, Health and Well-Being Understanding

“Pathways to Culture, Health, and Well-Being Understanding” is a contemporary, open educational resource (OER) content created firsthand to serve the learning objectives of the "Culture, Health and Well-Being" course. This teaching book focuses on bringing together the new knowledge and developments on understanding how regional cultures and health are intertwined and influence our perceptions and choices on health and well-being. The aim is for students of all majors to get deeper insights on cultural competence as a key driver in the population’s health, health professions, and health systems as well as on its influence on health, and well-being across ethnic and vulnerable group

Advancing the diversity and inclusion agenda in healthcare organizations: The case of German university hospitals

Introduction: Diversity and inclusion (D&I) challenges in the hospital workforce continue to pose threats to an inclusive work environment. Acknowledging the benefits of a diverse and inclusive healthcare workforce, the Association of German University Hospitals signed the German Diversity Charter to encourage its member hospitals to apply policies to cultivate such a workplace. This policy brief explores the implementation of D&I policies aligned with the Charter in six university hospitals in Germany, aiming to identify the policy gaps and provide recommendations for improvement. Policy Options: The Charter´s commitments include a shared organizational vision of D&I as a source of great potential and the significant support of the senior management. It also includes D&I in employment processes, open communication about policies, and active employee engagement. Overall, a comprehensive D&I strategy has been shown to be vital for sustainable change. However, not all the hospitals have signed it, nor do all fully adhere to its policies. Therefore, recommendations are provided for the Association to support their constituents in working toward comprehensive D&I policies. Recommendations: Most importantly, the Association should further promote D&I awareness, enhance the support to the hospitals to improve D&I activities, and lead and monitor the implementation and outcomes of the adopted D&I strategies and policies. The comprehensive approach includes transparency; measurement and evaluation to assess the successes and failures of the strategies; the commitment by senior management to D&I efforts; and bottom-up involvement for employees to share their concerns and get involved.  &nbsp

Diverse and inclusive leadership teams in public health schools: the change agents for sustainable and inclusive public health education

Context: An inclusive and diverse public health workforce maximizes health outcomes. However, little is known about the current diversity and inclusiveness profile of professionals, leaders and students of public health. To obtain a diverse and inclusive (D&I) public health workforce in the future, D&I leadership in Public Health Schools is necessary to encourage a D&I student body.                                     Policy Options: A variety of policy responses can be utilized to diversify schools of public health (SPH). Response types include (i) exploratory policies that instigate D&I research with the aim to increase knowledge and build hypotheses, (ii) regulatory (and financial) policies that change the environment by placing rules, restrictions, or expectations on the institution to increase and promote D&I and (iii) soft options, which are non-binding actions that aim to change the institutional culture surrounding D&I. However, policies are often not specifically tailored to their school and are therefore unsuccessful.   Recommendations: To understand the composition and identify gaps within the current diversity and inclusion (D&I) profile of leadership in European Schools of Public Health (SPH) an exploratory needs assessment is advised. A baseline assessment will be the much needed first step of this paper’s proposed project: The Diverse and Inclusive Public Health Schools (DIPHS) Project. A needs assessment should be seen as a baseline evaluation of the current D&I profile among leaders in European Schools of Public Health (SPH). This information should then build the basis to encourage institution-tailored policy interventions for SPH to actively promote a diverse and inclusive public health workforce. &nbsp

Diverse and inclusive leadership teams in public health schools: the change agents for sustainable and inclusive public health education

Context: An inclusive and diverse public health workforce maximizes health outcomes. However, little is known about the current diversity and inclusiveness profile of professionals, leaders and students of public health. To obtain a diverse and inclusive (D&I) public health workforce in the future, D&I leadership in Public Health Schools is necessary to encourage a D&I student body.                                     Policy Options: A variety of policy responses can be utilized to diversify schools of public health (SPH). Response types include (i) exploratory policies that instigate D&I research with the aim to increase knowledge and build hypotheses, (ii) regulatory (and financial) policies that change the environment by placing rules, restrictions, or expectations on the institution to increase and promote D&I and (iii) soft options, which are non-binding actions that aim to change the institutional culture surrounding D&I. However, policies are often not specifically tailored to their school and are therefore unsuccessful.   Recommendations: To understand the composition and identify gaps within the current diversity and inclusion (D&I) profile of leadership in European Schools of Public Health (SPH) an exploratory needs assessment is advised. A baseline assessment will be the much needed first step of this paper’s proposed project: The Diverse and Inclusive Public Health Schools (DIPHS) Project. A needs assessment should be seen as a baseline evaluation of the current D&I profile among leaders in European Schools of Public Health (SPH). This information should then build the basis to encourage institution-tailored policy interventions for SPH to actively promote a diverse and inclusive public health workforce.   Acknowledgments: We thank Valia Kalaitzi, our senior advisor, and Kasia Czabanowska for their thoughtful feedback.   Authors’ contributions: All authors contributed equally to this work.   Source of funding: None declare

Advancing the diversity and inclusion agenda in healthcare organizations: The case of German university hospitals

Introduction: Diversity and inclusion (D&I) challenges in the hospital workforce continue to pose threats to an inclusive work environment. Acknowledging the benefits of a diverse and inclusive healthcare workforce, the Association of German University Hospitals signed the German Diversity Charter to encourage its member hospitals to apply policies to cultivate such a workplace. This policy brief explores the implementation of D&I policies aligned with the Charter in six university hospitals in Germany, aiming to identify the policy gaps and provide recommendations for improvement. Policy Options: The Charter´s commitments include a shared organizational vision of D&I as a source of great potential and the significant support of the senior management. It also includes D&I in employment processes, open communication about policies, and active employee engagement. Overall, a comprehensive D&I strategy has been shown to be vital for sustainable change. However, not all the hospitals have signed it, nor do all fully adhere to its policies. Therefore, recommendations are provided for the Association to support their constituents in working toward comprehensive D&I policies. Recommendations: Most importantly, the Association should further promote D&I awareness, enhance the support to the hospitals to improve D&I activities, and lead and monitor the implementation and outcomes of the adopted D&I strategies and policies. The comprehensive approach includes transparency; measurement and evaluation to assess the successes and failures of the strategies; the commitment by senior management to D&I efforts; and bottom-up involvement for employees to share their concerns and get involved.    Acknowledgements: We would like to thank our senior advisor, Valia Kalaitzi, PhD, for the considerate feedback and heart-warming support. Authors’ contributions: All authors contributed equally to this work. Conflicts of interest: None declared. Funding: None declared.

Global health leadership: recall thepast to better understand the present

The COVID-19 pandemic makes us reflect on the lessons learnt from history, which witnessed the loss of lives, opportunities and leadership. The authors attempt to discuss the implications of the past on dealing with the contemporary health crisis. The scale and unpredictability of the coronavirus have shaken our systems and access to them in a significant way. Regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, or age, health care leaders at every level of health system including frontline health care professionals such as nurses, physicians and medical rescuers are confronted with the unprecedented situations that require values-driven, ethical approaches. A once-in-a-hundred-years pandemic offers an opportunity for health leaders to reconsider and refresh the values and priorities they espouse, renew a commitment to strive for a more humanized approach to the pandemic, solidarity, equality and democracy and, of course, shared, scientific knowledge. As we learn from history, humanity will celebrate a victory against current and future pandemics

The utilization of maternal health services at primary healthcare setting in Southeast Asian Countries: a systematic review of the literature

The reduction of Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) remains a global health issue. Although major progress has been achieved in the past 15 years, the ratio is still high, especially in Low Middle-Income Countries. In the Southeast Asian region, most of the countries have not reached the Sustainable Development Goals target yet. Although the countries have several similarities in many aspects, such as community characteristics, cultural context, health systems, and geographical proximity, the MMR in the region presents interesting variations. The scope of this systematic review is to explore published literature on the utilization of maternal health services at the community healthcare centre setting in Southeast Asian countries. The databases PubMed, Web of Science, and Google Scholar were searched systematically to identify quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods studies published in 2000–2020. A total of 1876 records were found, out of which 353 full text were screened. Finally, 27 studies on utilization of maternal health services met the inclusion criteria and were selected for analysis from seven Southeast Asian countries: Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, The Philippines, Timor Leste and Vietnam. Most of the articles focused on the utilization of maternal health services at primary health care setting. Several themes on maternal health services utilization in the countries emerged, including cultural and socioeconomic factors contributed to the utilization of maternal health services, factors associated with the low utilization of ANC, determinants affected place of delivery and delivery assistance choice. The utilization of maternal health services at primary healthcare setting in seven Southeast Asian countries was identified in a small number of studies. Sociocultural barriers and disparities of health services provision are the major factors associated with low utilization of the services. Further research on strengthening the role of primary healthcare in maternal health services provision is required