Cultural Competence

Effective teen pregnancy prevention and adolescent reproductive health services are integrated, client-centered, and culturally appropriate for the communities they serve. They respectfully address teens’ social, cultural, and economic contexts, appreciate diverse perspectives and roles, and communicate effectively across cultures in their communities.

Multiracial Hands Making a Circle ImageThe Working with Diverse Communities component works to build the capacity of Part A grantees and their community partners to 1) ensure that clinical providers and their staff have the necessary skills and knowledge to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate, adolescent friendly clinical reproductive health services, and 2) integrate cultural competency into their work and evaluation plans.

In this section you will find Cultural Competence resources and tools from multiple sources that address the many facets of cultural and linguistic competence and that assist providers and organizations to move along the continuum of cultural competence toward more culturally informed, client-centered practice and service. One important resource to start with is the National Standards on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (the CLAS Standards), which form a foundation for ensuring that clinical reproductive health services are culturally and linguistically appropriate for the adolescents they serve.

Enhancing Cultural Competence in Out-of-School Time Programs: What Is It, and Why Is It Important?

Child Trends, 2007 — This “research to practice” resource  provides suggestions to youth-serving programs for developing cultural competence among staff and within program activities, in order to benefit youth from a wide range of backgrounds. PDF

A Teen-Friendly Reproductive Health Visit

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014— This graphic from CDC’s Division of Reproductive Health highlights key elements of two teen-friendly reproductive health clinic visits, one for a female and one for a male. PDF