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<section article="ghg" article_name="Health - General" number="20-1301" title_number="20" title_name="Miscellaneous Health Provisions" subtitle_number="13" subtitle_name="Cultural and Linguistic Competency of Health Care Professionals">
  <level label="a">
    <text>In this subtitle the following words have the meanings indicated.</text>
  </level>
  <level label="b">
    <text>“Cultural and linguistic competency” means cultural and linguistic abilities that can be incorporated into therapeutic and medical evaluation and treatment, including:</text>
    <level label="1">
      <text>Direct communication in the patient’s primary language;</text>
    </level>
    <level label="2">
      <text>Understanding and applying the roles that culture, ethnicity, and race play in diagnosis, treatment, and clinical care; and</text>
    </level>
    <level label="3">
      <text>Awareness of how the attitudes, values, and beliefs of health care providers and patients influence and impact professional and patient relations.</text>
    </level>
  </level>
  <level label="c">
    <text>“Health care professional” includes a physician, nurse, dentist, social worker, psychologist, pharmacist, health educator, or other allied health professional.</text>
  </level>
  <level label="d">
    <text>“Implicit bias” means a bias in judgment that results from subtle cognitive processes, including the following prejudices and stereotypes that often operate at a level below conscious awareness and without intentional control:</text>
    <level label="1">
      <text>Prejudicial negative feelings or beliefs about a group that an individual holds without being aware of the feelings or beliefs; and</text>
    </level>
    <level label="2">
      <text>Unconscious attributions of particular qualities to a member of a specific social group that are influenced by experience and based on learned associations between various qualities and social categories, including race and gender.</text>
    </level>
  </level>
  <level label="e">
    <text>“Program” means the Cultural and Linguistic Health Care Professional Competency Program.</text>
  </level>
  <level label="f">
    <text>“Structural racism” means the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination by mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice.</text>
  </level>
</section>
