Recommended Books

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Managing Diversity: A Complete Desk Reference and Planning Guide
by Lee Gardenswartz, and Anita Rowe

Managing Diversity is a comprehensive reference on diversity with an excellent mixture of practical information, worksheets and activities. It goes past diversity awareness to systemic, long-term, hands-on implementation of a diversity strategy. Included are approximately 100 charts, checklists, suggested activities, worksheets, systems audits, exercises, sample interview questions, and tip sheets.

Exercises and worksheets are accompanied by the author's suggestions on how they can be best utilized in the trenches as well as how they fit into the theory of what is being explained in the text. The book covers everything from theory, implementation, evaluation and measurement to what the future holds, why some programs have failed, and what to do about it as well as offering a comprehensive resource section.

Culture and the Clinical Encounter: An Intercultural Sensitizer for the Health Professions
by Rena C. Gropper

A promising Navajo student in medical school drops out before his final exam; a Muslim diabetic won't take the insulin he needs; a woman from Haiti refuses to accept her medical bill—why? In this book, readers discover possible explanations for these and forty-one other cross-cultural clinical encounters which encompass twenty-three cultural and ethnic groups.

This book provides a much needed contrast to the standard didactic techniques used in the training of health professionals. It gives the reader an opportunity to participate actively in the learning process and to discover through real-life incidents the impact of cultural differences in the clinical encounter and the potential consequences of misunderstanding and miscommunication. The reader gains the skills and motivation to be alert to possible intercultural misperceptions or conflicts and their outcomes. Helps prepare the professional to think creatively and to ask appropriate, clarifying questions.

Caring for Patients from Different Cultures: Case Studies from American Hospitals (2nd Edition)
by Geri-Ann Galanti

Case studies of cross-cultural misunderstandings and how they can be avoided. There are chapters on such topics as communication, pain, religion, dietary practices, birth, death, family, men and women, staff relations, and folk medicine. A complete index to the 172 case studies, cross-referenced by ethnic group and topic, is included along with an extensive bibliography. A valuable and interesting volume that holds the reader's attention from beginning to end.

Community Health Psychology: Empowerment for Diverse Communications
by Victor De La Cancela et al

Community Health Psychology is a comprehensive examination, including both historical and contemporary accounts, of populations of color in the United States. With engaging insight, these essays describe community health psychology models that inspire integrative approaches to health care administration for diverse communities. Based on extensive clinical and administrative experiences, the authors offer a new definition of community health psychology – one that demands improved access, communication, and cultural awareness in systems of care.

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
by Anne Fadiman

Lia Lee was born in 1981 to a family of recent Hmong immigrants and soon developed symptoms of epilepsy. By 1988 she was living at home but was brain dead after a tragic cycle of misunderstanding, overmedication, and culture clash: What the doctors viewed as clinical efficiency the Hmong viewed as frosty arrogance. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down is a tragedy of Shakespearean dimensions, written with the deepest of human feeling. Sherwin Nuland said of the account, "There are no villains in Fadiman's tale, just as there are no heroes. People are presented as she saw them, in their humility and their frailty—and their nobility.