Integrating Cultural Humility into Online Grant-Writing Instruction

Background: The purpose of this project was to integrate cultural humility concepts into the Network of the National Library of Medicine's existing self-paced, online course about writing grant proposals for health outreach projects. Cultural humility involves ongoing openness to learning from the experiences of others, particularly members of marginalized groups. This attitude is important for educational offerings because it promotes a positive learning environment for participants with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Although the connection between cultural humility and grant-writing might not be immediately obvious, the collaborative nature of writing a grant proposal and conducting a grant-funded outreach project suggests that cultural humility concepts may be valuable in grant-writing instruction.

Description: A NNLM staff member revised the course's discussions of collaborative work and relationships with partner organizations for grant-funded health outreach projects. The course now emphasizes including people from a health outreach project's target audience in every step of the project, from planning to evaluation. It recommends forming relationships with groups serving these audiences outside of any grant application process, so these partners are not treated as a mere means of winning a grant. The revised course also encourages members of project teams who are from more privileged backgrounds to be open to correction if they say or do something insensitive, because fostering a welcoming environment requires a lifelong learning process that inevitably involves making mistakes. Additionally, microaggressions, such as statements that assume participants come from a specific cultural background, were removed throughout the course.

Conclusion: In the first nine months that the updated course was available, 57 participants enrolled in it, which was an increase of 21% over the same period one year earlier. An evaluation survey at the end of the course found that 100% of respondents who took the updated course reported that it would be useful to their work, compared to 85% of respondents who took the previous version of the course. The course completion rate did not differ between these periods. These results suggest that cultural humility concepts may be seen by participants as a valuable addition to online, self-paced professional-development courses, even those devoted to topics where the connection to diversity and equity is not immediately apparent.