We developed a specific cultural proficiency curriculum to reduce risks that investigators and staff members might unwittingly communicate their personal biases to study participants. This highly individualized and unique cultural proficiency training program exposed research study staff to the cultural context of the research study and potential participants. The course modules were developed by the principal investigators and used outside experts to provide insight into how individual perspectives can facilitate or hinder clinical research. It helped researchers avoid cultural generalizations; introduced researchers to cross-cultural communication techniques; discussed barriers created by ethnocentrism, prejudice, anxiety, assumptions; and discussed the ways stereotyping influences interpersonal relationships with persons from a culture or cultural perspective other than one's own. Different facets of cultural proficiency training are provided yearly. Given the continuous nature of the training, it remained a wellspring from which staff regularly updated their skills for self-examination and raised their self-awareness on the diversity of cultural perspectives and values inherent in the general population from which the study draws participants.
