A fundamental component of high-quality health care involves the active consideration of
culture in the care of communities of color. Various researchers have used a number of
overlapping terms, such as cultural competence, cultural targeting, and cultural tailoring, to
define strategies for addressing culture. For the purposes of this article, we define cultural
competence as the broadest rubric for the strategy of embracing cultural variables in health
care interventions. Cultural competence is a term used to describe “a set of congruent behaviors,
attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency or amongst professionals and
enables that system, agency or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural
situations” (Cross et al. 1989). While cultural competence often refers to the ability of clinicians
to interact successfully with patients whose backgrounds differ from the mainstream culture,
the term is also used to describe how health care systems interact with these patients. For
example, the New Mexico Department of Health Children’s Medical Services, Family Health
Bureau, implemented a multipronged systemic cultural competence program evaluated by the
National Center for Cultural Competence (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Office of Minority Health 2003). In addition, a growing body of federal and state laws,
regulations, and standards seeks to guarantee that health systems respond to these diverse
linguistic and cultural needs by becoming culturally competent (U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, Office of Minority Health 2001).