The course will use indigenous health as an example to illustrate the importance of cultural competence on global health issues. Cultural competence is a critical element of cultural safety, which also encompasses notions such as cultural awareness and cultural sensitivity. Cultural safety – defined as including a strategic and intensely practical plan to change the way healthcare is delivered to indigenous peoples – has been adopted for new approaches to healthcare and community healing by the healthcare providers who are working in indigenous community, through recognising the contemporary conditions of indigenous peoples which result from their post-contact history.

A specific attention is given to how colonialism affects indigenous health and well-beings. Basing upon the concept of cultural safety, this course will explore several indigenous health issues, including indigenous health inequalities, indigenous cultural safety, social determinants of indigenous health, indigenous ethnomedicine, indigenous mental health, indigenous eco-health, indigenous health promotion, and indigenous long-term care. In addition to lectures, fieldtrips will be arranged to visit government institutions, indigenous hospital, and indigenous communities for enhancing students’ understandings to the relationship between cultural safety and indigenous health from the global health perspective.