CONTACT: Mary Margaret Colliver, (859) 257-4824 or 361-1887
FOR RELEASE
UK Hosts 4th Annual Cultural Competence Conference for Students
LEXINGTON, Ky. (Aug. 21, 2006) − The University of Kentucky’s Area Health
Education Center and UK President’s Commission on Diversity will host the 4th Annual
Cultural Competence Conference, "Reflections on Race, Ethnicity and Culture: Considerations
for Health Professionals," for over 600 UK health-professions students from noon to 5:45 p.m.
Wednesday, Aug. 23, at the Lexington Convention Center.
UK is one of the few institutions in the United States offering this comprehensive
conference to its health professions students. UK was the first in the U.S. to sponsor a
conference and its success has been so rewarding to health professions students that other
institutions have adopted the model. The conference was initiated to mark the beginning of a
lifelong journey of awareness and examination of cultural issues in each student’s professional
career. The conference serves as a cornerstone for a learning process through which students
will acquire knowledge and skills related to cultural competence in courses, symposia,
experiential activities, and life experiences.
“We are pleased once again to be able to offer this conference for the fourth year to our
entering health professions students from all six colleges,” said Anthony Hartsfield, assistant
program director for UK’s Health Careers Opportunity Program, UK College of Medicine. “The
students will be able to apply skills to increase effective communication and understanding
among people of different racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, as well as understand how
subconscious biases could affect the clinical decision-making process and contribute to
racial/ethnic disparities in health care.”
Keynote addresses will be presented by Dr. Joseph Betancourt, director, The
Disparities Solution Center, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and
Dr. Alexander Green, senior scientist, The Disparities Solutions Center, and lecturer, Harvard
Medical School.I
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CulConcurrent sessions will be held following the addresses. They include: Changing
Kentucky Realities: Implications for Health; Stories We Tell Each Other; the Enemy Within:
The Danger of Assumptions; Exploring Mind, Body and Medicine: Optimizing Health and
Healing for Yourself and Patients; and Stereotypes and Biases: Effect on Clinical Care.
UK President Lee T. Todd Jr.will deliver remarks and the closing session, A Gathering
of Voices, will be presented b Dr. John Stone, professor emeritus of medicine (cardiology),
Emory University School of Medicine.
For more information, call (859) 323-8018 or ahart2@email.uky.edu.
In striving to become a Top 20 public research institution, the University of Kentucky is a catalyst for a
new Commonwealth – a Kentucky that is healthier, better educated, and positioned to compete in a global and
changing economy. For more information about UK’s efforts to become a Top 20 university, please go to
http://www.uky.edu/OPBPA/Top20.html