Social Work education is focused on helping students identify triggers and biases prior to entering the workforce, with an aim towards cultural competence. Class discussions and homework assignments are particularly intentional: through various assignments, students are urged to work on those issues before entering clinical practice. Young Adult (YA) literature has been successfully used in the field of Education to teach empathy and reflectivity regarding diversity to preservice teachers. The use of YA literature may hold promise for Social Work education as a teaching tool, but the extent of current use in Social Work education is unknown. An anonymous survey of Social Work faculty at Florida universities was conducted using Qualtrics. The survey was sent to approximately 250 instructors of undergraduate and graduate courses. Eighteen surveys were completed, and 17 were used in data analysis. It was found that the majority of respondents used non-textbook and print material at least some of the time in their courses. Of those who used YA Literature in their courses, more than half the time it was used to facilitate cultural and diversity learning. Based on the data, YA literature holds promises for social work education in the area of development of cultural empathy. This study lays the groundwork for further research on how YA literature can be incorporated into cultural competency coursework.

Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) was birthed from the framework of multicultural education. Multicultural Education is a broad framework that focuses on equity amongst race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomics, disabilities, and other groups who identified as marginalized. Culturally responsive teaching encompasses the ability to acknowledge cultural differences, expand diversity of thought, all while having a caring relationship with students. The literature says that both of the multicultural education and CRT, help foster inclusive classrooms and spaces on campus. CRT also notes that a teacher’s ability to care about students influences positive outcomes for learning. For the last 30 years, CRT has been studied from the perspective of K-12 students. While this research is important the researcher argues that culturally responsive teaching is needed at the university. All research questions for this study were created through the lens of multicultural education, CRT, and Nodding’s Caring Theory. Since CRT is typically examined with minority students only, the researcher explored both minority and White students at Mississippi State University to understand if the techniques were equitable and inclusive for all learners. A total of eight focus groups were held between Fall 2017 to Fall 2019 with 39 total participants, undergraduate (n=28) and graduate students (n= 11). Participants included mostly minority students (n=21) and females (n= 21). While there were some major differences between undergraduate and graduate CRT experiences, there were more commonalities that arose when theming occurred. Students from all focus groups were able to identify at least five out of the six characteristics of culturally responsive teaching; however, minority students were able to talk about feelings of exclusion inside and outside of the classroom, as it pertained to the racial and ethnic identity. Minority students were better able to identify what culturally responsive teaching means and what it looks like in practice. Minority students were also more reflective in their responses around feeling included and excluded both inside and outside of the classroom. All students wanted a teacher that cared for them and to make the course material relevant to their lives.

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Few general dentists feel comfortable treating very young children 0-5-years old due to inadequate training and exposure. Over the past few years, there is an increasing demand on providers to be culturally competent and meet the health needs of the culturally diverse population. OBJECTIVE: Assess the gained knowledge, perception and confidence in providing clinical dental care to vulnerable populations, pregnant adolescents and to very young children 0-5-years old following the enhancement of the predoctoral pediatric dental curriculum and training which was aimed to prepare future practitioners to be culturally competent in providing pediatric dental care to the current culturally diverse population. METHODS: This is a retrospective cross-sectional analysis conducted among the predoctoral students including the Doctor of Dental Medicine-(DMD) and Advanced Standing-(AS) who underwent pediatric dental training between 2017-2022 at Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts. Predoctoral students participated in the pre/post training surveys of the implemented didactic training program in cultural competency and oral health literacy lectures. The students completed questionnaires on their knowledge and confidence level on treating children 0-5-years old following the novel simulation scenario discussion after the Haptic simulator training and following clinical training in the pediatric dental clinic. Descriptive statistics were calculated, univariate and multivariate analysis were used to analyze the differences in the level of knowledge gained by program type, year of training and demographic characteristics such as age and gender. Statistical significance was set at p-value<0.05. RESULTS: The cultural competency training improved the students’ knowledge and perception. DMD-students performed better to have a higher level of knowledge in the post training survey compared to AS-students (OR=4.724;p<0.001). Based on the post training questionnaires, the haptic simulator session and novel simulation scenarios increased the students’ knowledge and confidence to treat pediatric patients. Student’s confidence to treat children 0-5-years and pregnant adolescents improved after completing the trainings. CONCLUSION: The new enhanced training program increased the predoctoral students’ knowledge and confidence to treat children 0-5-years. This can be beneficial when used in dental departments to support predoctoral graduates to be culturally competent who can be better prepared to manage the diverse population.

Death is an inevitable part of life, yet many Americans fail to plan for this final part of life. Only about 1/3 of our country has an advance directive (Off White Papers, 2014). This underutilization of advance directives is reflected in our health care spending. It is estimated that 30% of all Medicare spending occurs during the last six months of a patient’s life. The numbers are even lower when broken down into sub-categories. Only 24% of older Black Americans possess an advance directive versus 44% of their older White counterparts (Huang, Neuhaus, & Chiong, 2016). Some studies found that African Americans were more likely to “express discomfort discussing death, want aggressive care at the end of life, have spiritual beliefs which conflict with the goals of palliative care, and distrust the healthcare system” (Johnson, Kuchibhatla, & Tulsky, 2008). Other studies have even concluded that Black race is an independent predictor of lack of advance directive possession (Huang et al., 2016). This paper further explores the possibility that race and ethnicity may simply be proxies for cultural values that impact advance directive possession. We’ll discuss the barriers, for both Black patients and health care providers, to advance directive possession as well as investigate culturally mindful interventions to combat the barriers. / Urban Bioethics