The results from a health educator survey Educating for Equity – Health Educators Survey Alice Wilkin, Research Assistant, Onemda

Background Educating for Equity (E4E) project Funding initiative of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Health Research Council of New Zealand and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. The E4E project is investigating how current and future health professionals may influence chronic illness and the high burden of disease in Indigenous communities. The Health Educator Survey is part of the E4E project.

Health Educator Survey The Health Educator Survey asked health educators- Where (in the curriculum) they thought the teaching of health disparities in different population groups is taught? Whose responsibility? What are the intended and seen outcomes for inclusion? Where the health educator’s placed the teaching of Indigenous health within the context of teaching health students about health disparities? The information obtained from the survey provided insights into health educator’s perspective on health disparities, Indigenous health, and the methods in which this was taught at their respective universities.

Methods Participants = 20 x current university level health educators. Data collection = semi structured interviews. Analysis = thematic analysis

Curricula descriptions Findings Curricula descriptions ‘integrated curricula’ “It doesn’t say understanding health disparity but within that is has been raised a lot, incidentally. For example, we had someone come and talk about the social determinants of health and she talked about inequity, we had someone talk about the economic determinants of health and I hadn’t cued them in but they talked about the massive disparities” (participant no. 11).

The aim of teaching this content Findings continued… The aim of teaching this content 50% of those interviewed stated that the aims were to equip the students with knowledge about a range of issues including inequity, cultural awareness, and primary health care issues. 15% of the participants said that the aim was to help the underserved community/ies in Australia. Other responses included: to improve doctor’s health literacy; to teach the students about class in society; to increase the Indigenous health workforce.

Prescriptive teaching “If they are speaking quietly, you speak quietly, if they are sitting up straight, you sit up straight, if they are wanting to crack a joke you crack a joke, and you’ll very very quickly establish a rapport with them and they get comfortable and then you go into the real whatever. It seems to work” (participant no. 8).

Prescriptive teaching contin… “If it’s an Indian woman you may have to speak to her husband and those sorts of things. Different requirements and you feel for students because they have to learn all that” (participant no. 8). “Italians will always want to be part of everything and you learn when to invite those people in with the patient” (participant no. 2).

Prescriptive teaching contin… “We want them to enroll a patient that is culturally diverse to them as possible. So whether that be ethnically, socio economically, sexuality, religions, whatever, age even, we want them to pick someone who is different” (participant no. 4).

Who is teaching the teachers? 75% of the participants had never had any formal academic training specific to teaching about health disparities despite teaching this to medical and health science students. 50% of the participants said they had learned from past experience of working within the health sector. 25% learned in their undergraduate studies (however this was mainly via biomedical statistics). 15% said they had learned because they had lived somewhere where they were not from the dominant culture. 10% learned from Indigenous colleagues.  

For more information go to the www.educatingforequity.net Issues raised Limitations Where from here? For more information go to the www.educatingforequity.net Or email alice.wilkin@unimelb.edu.au