Multiculturality skills, health care and communication disorders

TLDR: The increase on the number of immigrants and refugees, understanding the structure of various languages to differentiate a typicality from disorders, and the use of the internet facilitates the knowledge development of health practitioners.

Abstract: Cad. Saúde Pública 2018; 34(4):e00217217 There are 65.6 million people around the world who have been forced from their homes, primarily in the Middle East 1. Large numbers of refugees have also originated from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, Myanmar, Eritrea, and Colombia 2. Many of the refugees and immigrants are included in the 20% of the world’s poorest people who have some type of disability 3. Consequently, there is an increased demand for health care for individuals with diverse language, religious, cultural, and social backgrounds and institutions. Health professionals are being asked to develop a greater knowledge of the needs of these diverse populations 4. The multiculturality of contemporary life reflects the economic globalization and migration processes. The movement across borders are a result from religious bias, warfare, and the search for a better life. Greater knowledge and respect for the populations from different origins across the world are necessary for health care actions to be more effective 5. Understanding cultural and language differences is necessary in clinical practice to provide therapeutic strategies that are appropriate to these different groups. Cultural competence education for health professionals must ensure that all adults and children receive equitable and effective health care, particularly those from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds 6. Cultural competence is an important strategy to address health inequalities. Being aware of the processes of interculturality of contemporary life is necessary: the increase on the number of immigrants and refugees, understanding the structure of various languages to differentiate a typicality from disorders, and the use of the internet facilitates the knowledge development of health practitioners. A clinical speech-language pathologist must be prepared to care for patients from different contexts. To address this demand, researchers in human communication sciences must go beyond the traditional approaches and investigate diverse strategies related to speech-language pathology assessment and intervention. International collaboration is being developed as a strategy to provide services to underserved and unserved populations with disorders 7. Collaboration involves a team that provides a diverse set of skills, providing ideal approaches to a population that requires support. In collaborations, those with expertise transfer their knowledge to those who need it. One example is the collaboration in Guangzhou, China 8. The Bureau of Education of Guangzhou sponsored a three-year grant in 2016 to offer continuous training to special education teachers. The unserved population that was targeted were children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Results of the collaboration were the greater knowledge of strategies, interventions, and resources for sensory processing disorders of parents 1 Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brasil. 2 Lehman College, City University of New York, New York, U.S.A.