Culturally Sensitive Health Care and Counseling Psychology: An Overview

Abstract

This article introduces the Major Contribution, which focuses on counseling psychologists' roles in addressing health disparities through culturally sensitive health care research and interventions. First, the authors provide a rationale for conducting research focused on culturally sensitive health care and then offer definitions of patient-centered culturally sensitive health care and related terms, drawing from both the health care and counseling psychology literatures. In addition, the authors address the broader question of how factors such as culturally sensitive health care influence health outcomes through an analysis of psychosocial mechanisms of health. Finally, the authors outline how counseling psychologists' expertise in a variety of areas can be applied to the medical field, and they briefly summarize progress that the field of counseling psychology has already made to this end.