Advancing Cultural Competency in Allied Health Education: A Narrative Review

As the U.S. population becomes increasingly diverse, allied health care providers must be equipped to deliver culturally competent and equitable care. While nursing education has long emphasized cultural competence, its integration into allied health disciplines varies. This narrative review synthesizes evidence from 2015 to 2025, examining three main approaches to cultural competence training in allied health education: cultural immersion, didactic coursework, and workshops or simulations. The findings suggest that no single strategy is sufficient. Cultural immersion promotes self-awareness and empathy through direct engagement with diverse communities; however, these experiences can be resource-intensive and hard to sustain. Didactic coursework offers a necessary theoretical foundation but can remain too abstract unless paired with practical experiences. Workshops and simulation-based training improve communication and clinical skills, but their benefits often decline without ongoing reinforcement. A hybrid approach, combining coursework, immersion, and repeated practice via workshops or simulations, produces the most consistent and lasting improvements. Reflection also plays a key role in reinforcing skill and attitude retention. Barriers to implementation include varying faculty readiness, limited access to immersion experiences, and reliance on self-reported outcomes. Specific fields such as radiologic sciences, speech-language pathology, dietetics, and respiratory therapy are underrepresented in the literature. Emerging methods, including interprofessional learning, virtual simulation, and telehealth-based cultural encounters, present promising pathways for scalable training. Overall, the evidence supports integrating cultural competence throughout allied health curricula over time, rather than treating it as a standalone requirement. Continuous, integrated approaches better prepare students to deliver equitable, patient-centered care across diverse clinical settings.