Policy and advocacy in culturally diverse health care

This chapter will focus on policy and advocacy aspects of culturally diverse health care. Students will explore the various roles that health professionals across a range of disciplines can play in terms of advocacy, community development and capacity building to address the social determinants of health. Students will review relevant documents, including national guidelines, professional codes of conduct and policies. Using cases from contemporary research, students will review a number of scenarios that can challenge health practitioners and their engagement with culturally safe practice. In doing so, students will critique policies and their application— whether inclusive and/or exclusive. The enablers and limitations to cultural safety will be discussed in the context of organisational policies and structures. Students will be provided with examples and encouraged to develop their own ideas about how to work within (or advocate for changes of) policy and practice relating to cultural safety. Students will be encouraged to reflect on these perspectives on cultural safety and its application in groups or online portfolios that can support peer feedback and exposure to perceptual variation.