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Building a Culturally Competent Workforce to Care for Diverse Older Adults: Scope of the Problem and Potential Solutions

The population of minority older adults is going to explode over the next four decades. Older adults from racial and ethnic minorities face persistent and pervasive health disparities. Health disparities exert a huge fiscal burden on the nation. The national financial cost of health disparities for the years 2002 to 2006 was an estimated 1.23 trillion dollars. As the aging population becomes more diverse, these disparity‐related costs are expected to increase. Older adults from racial and ethnic minorities face multiple barriers to accessing health and support services that will help them to age and die in place in the community. Patient‐related barriers include limited English proficiency, low health literacy, varying levels of acculturation, biases about Western healthcare and medications, mistrust of clinicians, inability to navigate the complex healthcare system, and cultural beliefs and taboos. Clinician‐related barriers include ageism (ie, discrimination against older people due to negative and inaccurate stereotypes), conscious and unconscious bias, being deeply entrenched in the culture of biomedicine, and the lack of training in the principles and practice of providing culturally respectful care. Health system–related barriers include lack of culturally tailored services, including access to medical interpreters. We conclude by identifying three specific strategies to facilitate culturally humble and respectful care for diverse patients. J Am Geriatr Soc 67:S423–S432, 2019.