Healthy Diversity Erasmus Project

Project Title

Healthy Diversity

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2015

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Inclusion – equity; Intercultural/intergenerational education and (lifelong)learning

Project Summary

Cultural differences do matter in the capacity to provide and access health services.
Exploratory training we have run show that professionals meet challenges related to cultural differences regularly – reflecting different conceptions and norms related to the body, to birth, to illness, to death, to medicine etc. These challenges, when not addressed properly, can result in the refusal of the treatment and hence the failure of the professionals to achieve their objectives.
In many European countries, the healthcare sector is characterised by high cultural diversity of the staff. An increasing number of staff are not born in the country. Therefore linguistic and cultural diversity are challenges underpinning all training needs in this area.
The six partner countries differ in the extent to which cultural diversity is addressed in health institutions (directly or indirectly) i.e. to the extent they offer special measures to facilitate the access to health services for people with different cultural backgrounds.
Several good initiatives exist in Denmark, Austria, the UK and Italy, however, there is still a strong need for dissemination and mainstreaming of intercultural approaches and best practices.

To address this issue the “Healthy Diversity” HEAD project offers innovative ICT based training tools to address cultural diversity in the health sector – both in terms of the client / patient groups served and the diversity of the personnel of the health institutions. This implies the development of the intercultural competences of health professionals as well as the development of health institutions’ capacity to handle diversity.

Our ICT-supported training tools would address the following target groups:
• Health professionals working with multicultural patient / client groups:
A compendium of critical incidents, a reader of medical anthropology and a training in intercultural skills would develop their competences for understanding and negotiate the patients’ concerns as well as to establish and maintain a rapport necessary for a successful treatment.
• Managers of health service providers and decision-makers:
A collection of innovative practices will serve as benchmark and model for the adaptation of local solutions to address diversity.
• Institutions providing continuous / initial education for health professionals
The testing and evaluation phase of the training materials developed will involve these institutions with the aim of both quality assurance and improvement but also further exploitation of these results.

To achieve our objectives we wish to
a) Map the impact of diversity on health sector through case oriented research
b) Identify and share existing best practices addressing diversity in the health sector.
c) Based on these develop a curricula and set of training materials available online.
d) Run a series of multiplier events and blended mobility for health professionals
e) Lobby healthcare decision makers on the need for cultural diversity underpinning training in the future.

“Healthy Diversity” addresses VET targetting health professionals attending multicultural patient / client groups, health service providers and institutions providing continuous / initial education for such professionals. We also aim to influence key decision makers at senior levels of management and governance. We also want to engage with adults with cultural minority backgrounds – who have a sound understanding of the cultural references of groups other than the majority society and could potentially use this cultural expertise in the health sector as cultural mediators.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 401965,32 Eur

Project Coordinator

Equality and Inclusion Partnership & Country: UK

Project Partners

• MHT CONSULT APS
• CESIE
• UNIVERSITAT WIEN
• ARTEMISSZIO ALAPITVANY
• ELAN INTERCULTUREL
• SOUTH WARWICKSHIRE NHS FOUNDATION TRUST