§ 251. Definitions

As used in this chapter:

(1) “Cultural competency” means a set of integrated attitudes, knowledge, and skills that enables a health care professional to care effectively for patients from cultures, groups, and communities other than that of the health care professional. At a minimum, cultural competency should include the following:

(A) awareness and acknowledgement of the health care professional’s own culture;

(B) utilization of cultural information to establish therapeutic relationships;

(C) eliciting and incorporating pertinent cultural data in diagnosis and treatment;

(D) understanding and applying cultural and ethnic data to the process of clinical care; and

(E) the ability to recognize the importance of communication, language fluency, and interpretation in the provision of health care services and assist with access to interpretation and appropriate communication services.

(2) “Cultural humility” means the ability to maintain an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented, or open to the other, in relation to aspects of cultural identity that are most important to the client or patient.

(3) “Health disparity” means differences that exist among specific population groups in the United States in attaining individuals’ full health potential that can be measured by differences in incidence, prevalence, mortality, burden of disease, and other adverse health conditions.

(4) “Health equity” means all people have a fair and just opportunity to be healthy, especially those who have experienced socioeconomic disadvantage, historical injustice, and other avoidable systemic inequalities that are often associated with the social categories of race, gender, ethnicity, social position, sexual orientation, and disability.

(5) “Health equity data” means demographic data, including, race, ethnicity, primary language, age, gender, socioeconomic position, sexual orientation, disability, homelessness, or geographic data that can be used to track health equity.

(6) “LGBTQ” means Vermonters who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning.

(7) “Non-White” means Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color. It is not intended to reflect self-identity, but rather how people are categorized in the racial system on which discrimination has been historically based in the United States and how Vermont typically disaggregates data solely by White and non-White.

(8) “Race and ethnicity” mean the categories for classifying individuals that have been created by prevailing social perceptions, historical policies, and practices. Race and ethnicity include how individuals perceive themselves and how individuals are perceived by others.

(9) “Social determinants of health” are the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age, such as poverty, income and wealth inequality, racism, and sex discrimination, that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. They can be grouped into five domains: economic stability, education access and quality, health care access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, and social and community context. Social determinants of health are systematic, interconnected, cumulative, and intergenerational conditions that are associated with lower capacity to fully participate in society. (Added 2021, No. 33, § 3; amended 2021, No. 105 (Adj. Sess.), § 346, eff. July 1, 2022.)