92578 Diversity and Culture

Description

"It's a small world, after all", and getting smaller every day! Today's world is an ever-evolving matrix of complex cultural interactions and diverse constructions of identity that include components of race, gender, nationality, sexuality, disability, age, and social status. In this subject, students explore the context of global and local diversity and its direct and indirect impact on health outcomes. The subject analyses both historical approaches to cultural interactions, and contemporary controversies that impact health. While ensuring a safe space for healthy discussion, students are taught to critically engage with their own personal perspectives, biases and prejudices, and those that are expressed more broadly in society as institutional power dynamics. Students gain insight and empathy into diverse ways of thinking and being, and use this knowledge to develop skills to effectively work within and be sensitively and respectfully aware of diverse cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.