Voice: Randy Rowel, PhD
Position: Assistant Professor at Morgan State University's School of Community Health and Policy and Director of the Why Culture Matters Disaster Studies Project
Organization: Morgan State University School Community Health and Policy
Location: Maryland
E-Mail: rrowel@jewel.morgan.edu
Keywords: Cultural Competence, Faith-Based Organizations, Community Resilience

Integration of the principles of cultural competence to public health frameworks is core to eliminating racial/ethnic disparities in health and health care. Yet few have investigated the role of cultural competence in the field of public health emergency preparedness (PHEP) as thoroughly as Dr. Randy Rowel.

The research agenda of Dr. Rowel and his colleagues is driven by a desire to strengthen the disaster resilience of vulnerable communities by applying the core principles of cultural competence. We spoke with Dr. Rowel to learn more about his team's research and his perspectives on implementing culturally competent strategies to engage racially and ethnically diverse populations in PHEP and strengthen community resilience to a disaster.

In collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health Preparedness, Dr. Rowel, faculty and students from Morgan State, co-sponsored the "Public Health Preparedness: Why Culture Matters Symposium." The symposium proceedings consisted of a series of expert presentations and round table discussions. The aim of these sessions was to better understand the role of the individual and the community in PHEP and examine how principles of cultural competence can be implemented to better address the needs of vulnerable populations across all phases of an emergency. Dr. Rowel and his colleagues are in the process of synthesizing symposium findings to construct a framework of the role of cultural competence in disaster health services. In addition to informing the development of culturally competent disaster health services, this framework will help local public health departments and other organizations better express how they are integrating principles of cultural competence into disaster plans.

According to Dr. Rowel, "A lot of emergency management professionals employ principles of cultural competency and don't realize it, if you asked them what they were doing to increase cultural competence many would find it difficult to articulate it, yet many of them spend a lot of time in the field attempting to understand the communities they serve. This is an important requirement for becoming culturally competent." Dr. Rowel believes the purpose of the research his team is conducting is to help emergency management professionals to better articulate what they are doing or not doing to provide culturally competent disaster related services to the communities they serve, especially vulnerable populations.

Dr. Rowel feels emphatically that it is this engagement with the local community that is absolutely vital to fully meeting their public health preparedness needs. Becoming culturally competent will help service providers to understand even the diversity that exists within vulnerable populations. As Dr. Rowel explains, "Not all minorities are vulnerable. Some minorities have the resources to get in a helicopter and fly away if something happens! It is the service providers' lack of knowledge about who they are and the similarities and differences in how minority populations deal with disaster preparedness, response, or recovery that makes them vulnerable."

By highlighting the benefits of community engagement and cultural competence in building disaster resilient communities, Dr. Rowel and his colleagues hope their research will encourage local emergency management or public health agencies to partner and/or fund community and faith-based organizations who best understand the specific needs of culturally diverse communities. "These organizations already have relationships with many of the vulnerable populations. We need to give these organizations the resources they need to help create a culture of preparedness," says Dr. Rowel.