Cultural Competence Interventions for Health Professionals Working with Racialized Foreign-born Older Adults: Protocol for a Systematic Review (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Integrating culturally competent approaches in the provision of healthcare services is recognized as a promising strategy for improving health outcomes for racially and ethnically diverse populations. Person-centered care, which ensures patient values guide care delivery, necessitates cultural competence of healthcare providers in order to reduce racial/ethnic health disparities. Previous work has focused on interventions to improve cultural competence among healthcare workers generally; however, little investigation has been undertaken regarding current practices focused on racialized foreign-born older adults. OBJECTIVE We seek to synthesize evidence from existing literature in the field to gain a comprehensive understanding of culturally competent interventions for health professionals who work with racialized foreign-born older adults. The aim of this paper is to describe the protocol for this review. METHODS Our protocol will follow the PRISMA guidelines (PRISMA-P) for systematic review protocols. We will conduct a systematic search for relevant studies from three electronic databases that focus on health and social sciences (PubMed, CINAHL, and Scopus). After selecting relevant papers using the inclusion and exclusion criteria, data will be extracted, analyzed, and synthesized to yield recommendations for practice and for future research. RESULTS The systematic review is currently at the search phase where authors are refining the search strings for the selected databases. We expect that the systematic review will be completed within 18 months from the publication of the protocol paper. CONCLUSIONS This study will inform future development and implementation of interventions to support culturally competent, person-centered care of racialized immigrant older adults.