Cultural competence of faculty and students in a school of allied health.

The School of Allied Health Sciences (SAHS) at East Carolina University administered a cultural competence survey to assess baseline competence for comparison with future, longitudinal assessments. This cultural competence assessment of students and faculty offers a comparison groupfor other schools of allied health that conduct similar studies. The faculty response rate was 59% with 35 completed surveys, and the student response rate was 28% with 151 respondents. The SAHS response rate for the faculty and students combined was 32% (N = 186). The allied health students consistently had higher mean scores than the faculty on knowledge of communities, personal involvement, and total score, although the differences were not statistically significant. This difference may be a reflection of the greater, although still relatively low, ethnic/cultural diversity among the students (82% white) compared with the faculty (97% white). The results are limited in generalizability to other schools of allied health with a predominately white female population.