Toward Health Equity: Mindfulness and Cultural Humility as Adult Education

Abstract

The subject of mindfulness these days seems to be everywhere in Western popular culture. It has many benefits, and many have embraced it as a method to reduce stress and improve mental and physical health. While there are numerous ways to describe mindfulness, Kabat-Zinn' s (1994) definition as "paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally" (p. 4) is used in this chapter' s discussion. Kabat-Zinn (1982) is credited with introducing mindfulness meditation to U.S. medicine when he developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program; he and his colleagues have successfully used it over the years to help patients suffering from chronic pain.What Kabat-Zinn (1994) began in 1979 continues to evolve into an acceptance and understanding by many researchers in the medical field of the mind-body interaction. Research using MBSR continues to support this mindbody connection by demonstrating associations between mindfulness practice and improvements in patients' health and well-being. Yet, it is important to acknowledge that the discussion of mindfulness in popular culture takes place within a larger media news discourse that tends to foreground the interests of the dominant culture. Our purpose in this chapter is to present mindfulness as a method to help educators and their students, in fields such as adult and public health education, incorporate the goal of health equity in their course facilitation from the perspective of cultural humility in light of this dominant discourse. Hence, we begin by providing a brief overview of the dynamics of the construction of the dominant discourse that creates an ideology, particularly around health care. Second we provide a snapshot of health-care spending and its unequal distribution within the United States. Third, we introduce cultural competence and cultural humility in health care. We end the chapter with implications for practice by explaining the utilization of mindfulness and cultural humility in educational settings far removed from medical encounters.

Developing Cultural Humility in Leadership Education Programs to Promote Community Leadership

“…Research has pointed to a relationship between the practice of mindfulness and humility (Verdorfer, 2016). Velott and Sprow Forté (2022) defined mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” (p. 57). The practice of mindfulness can be a useful tool for leadership educators to utilize in developing cultural humility.…”

“…However, it is critical that leadership educators consider the level of cognitive development of the learner; each student is at their own level of development. It is critical to consider Vygotsky's (1978) “zone of proximal development” as leadership educators introduce the practice of mindfulness as an avenue toward cultural humility (Velott & Sprow Forté, 2022). If introduced successfully,

Mindfulness helps us recognize that the choice to react to stimuli in our environment is entirely up to us.

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“…It supports our ability to calmly consider opposing views, but in no way prevents us from speaking up when we recognize flaws, fallacies, or injustice in messages, arguments, or events around us. (Velott & Sprow Forté, 2022, p. 62)…”

Cultural Humility: A Proposed Model for a Continuing Professional Development Program

“…In authentic practice or in real life, situations, challenges and successes are contextualised and "made sense of" by reflection-contemplating the outcomes and looking forward. Parts 1 and 2 of this program focus on "turning inward" [38] whereby participants explore their own cultural and professional identities, consider privilege and power structures and acknowledge how their background and experiences of privilege help, or hinder, their connection to patients. Prior to the workshop, participants would be asked to reflect on their own biases and assumptions about race, gender and sexual orientation by completing an online tool such as Harvard's Project Implicit (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/).…”