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Short-term Experiences in Global Health: What is the Cost of Cultural Competence?

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Abstract

Students in a wide variety of health professions are increasingly interested in volunteering on a short-term experience in global health (STEGH). The literature suggests that STEGHs pose a variety of potential risks and benefits, and may carry a significant cost to plan and provide. One potential mitigating factor for any risks and costs is that student participation on a STEGH may enhance their cultural competence. Since monies spent on STEGHs are fungible, and there may be other opportunities to improve students’ cultural competence, the objectives of this study were to determine if participation on a STEGH increased students’ cultural competence and if so, what the cost for any such increase was. In this study, 20 students who participated on a 1-week STEGH to the Dominican Republic completed the Inventory for Assessing the Process of Cultural Competence Among Health Care Professionals – Student Version (IAPCC-SV) before and after the STEGH. The costs for all students and 7 supervising health professionals to volunteer for the STEGH were calculated, and the size of any increase in cultural competence was determined. The cost was divided by the change in cultural competence to ascertain the cost of the change. Students showed a measureable increase on the IAPCC-SV overall and on the subscales of knowledge and skill. The cost of a 1% overall increase in students’ cultural competence ranged from $287 to $401. These results may allow schools offering STEGHs to determine if their offerings are cost-effective or not.

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Data Availability

All data is available from the Figshare Data Repository at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.6938456

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Funding

This study was funded in part by the John R. Ellis Research Endowment and the Harris Research Endowment at Drake University which had no control or influence on any part of the study or the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences, Drake University, Des Moines, IA, 50311, USA

    John Rovers, Michelle Becker & Michael Andreski

  2. Pharmacy Department, Mayo Clinic, 200 First St. SW, Rochester, MN, 55905, USA

    Michelle Becker

  3. College of Medicine, Des Moines University, Des Moines, IA, 50312, USA

    Jeffrey Gray

Authors
  1. John Rovers
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  2. Michelle Becker
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  3. Michael Andreski
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  4. Jeffrey Gray
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Contributions

The study was conceptualized by JR. Study design was by MA and MB with assistance from JR and JG. Data collection was performed by JR and JG. Data analysis was by MA, MB, and JR. The manuscript was written by JR with assistance from MB, MA, and JG. All authors have reviewed and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to John Rovers.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethics Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee (Drake University Institutional Review Board IRB Submission Number 2016-17027) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Not applicable. No individual’s data in any form has been included in this study.

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Rovers, J., Becker, M., Andreski, M. et al. Short-term Experiences in Global Health: What is the Cost of Cultural Competence?. Med.Sci.Educ. 30, 927–932 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-020-00975-4

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