This week I took a quick look into cultural brokerage, and was lucky enough to find some examples centered both within the Hmong culture and right here in Arizona!
DEFINED: “cultural brokering is the act of bridging, linking, or mediating between groups or persons of different cultural backgrounds for the purpose of reducing conflict or producing change (Jezewski, 1990). A cultural broker is defined as a go-between, one who advocates on behalf of another individual or group (Jezewski & Sotnik, 2001).
A review of literature reveals that during the 1960s, researchers began to use the concept of cultural brokers within the context of health care delivery to diverse communities. Wenger (1995) defined cultural brokering as “a health care intervention through which the professional increasingly uses cultural and health science knowledge and skills to negotiate with the client and the health care system for an effective, beneficial health care plan.”
NAVAJO HEALTH EDUCATOR MONITORS TRIBAL HEALTH THROUGH HOME VISITS Katie Tree, community advocate and diabetes health educator for the Dineh (Navajo) tribe in Chilchinbeto, AZ, makes home visits once a week to assess community members at high risk on the Navajo reservation, such as the elderly, new mothers, and individuals with chronic illness. Tree checks community members’ vital signs and medication and refers them to the local public health nurses who visit the reservation monthly. The home visits are a convenient and comfortable setting for patients to receive basic checkups because the closest health care facility, grocery store, or any other major retail outlet is 25 miles away from this small Northeastern Arizona town. Tree serves multiple roles within this tribal community. As a healer, she occasionally performs such indigenous ceremonies for community members as blessing, crushing, and boiling corn pollen to clear a person’s sinuses. As a cultural broker, she also helps physicians follow up with patients by educating them about how Dineh tribal members seek out different medicine men for various illnesses, “much in the way the White man sees a cardiologist for heart problems and a dentist for dental problems.”
CULTURAL EXCHANGES FOSTER RECIPROCITY BETWEEN SHAMAN AND PHYSICIANS Using hand-held tape recorders, Hmong community outreach liaisons interview shaman healers to obtain their training history and life story. This telling of stories is in a comfortable, folklore style and is familiar to shaman and the Hmong community alike. “The voice recorders allow shaman who are not literate to transmit information about their patients,” says program director Marilyn Mochel. The tape recorders also allow shaman to describe specific ceremonies performed for certain illnesses or conditions for their current patients. Story telling provides a safe format for the exchange of cultural information. Moreover, Mochel states, “A deeper understanding of the regional variations of shaman ceremonial styles is emerging.” These stories also chronicle the shaman’s accounts of their traumatic journey from Laos to settlement camps in Thailand, and to their final destination in the United States as refugees. At the same time, the histories help local physicians to understand the shaman’s healing heritage. This knowledge allows local physicians to accept the traditional ceremonial practices of the shaman without judging them by Western medical standards.
You can read the full document at: https://nccc.georgetown.edu/documents/Cultural_Broker_Guide_English.pdf
- Jezewski, M. A. (1990, August). Culture brokering in migrant farm worker health care. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 12(4), 497–513.
- Jezewski, M. A., & Sotnik, P. (2001). Culture brokering: Providing culturally competent rehabilitation services to foreign-born persons. (J. Stone, Ed.). Buffalo, NY: Center for International Rehabilitation Research Information and Exchange. Retrieved May 5, 2003, from the World Wide Web: http://cirrie.buffalo.edu/monographs/cb.pdf
- National Center for Cultural Competence Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development. (2004, Spring). Bridging the Cultural Divide in HealthCare Settings The Essential Role of Cultural Broker Programs. Retrieved April 27, 2018, from https://nccc.georgetown.edu/documents/Cultural_Broker_Guide_English.pdf
Maricopa Book Club 