Cultural Competence for Drug Addiction and Recovery: Considerations for Research and Evaluation

In the context of substance misuse and recovery, cultural competence is a process of understanding and describing the perceptions and experiences of an individual’s drug use, addiction, and recovery modalities through the lens of their cultural background. While scholars and practitioners tend to agree that implementing culturally competent approaches is essential for substance use treatment, these approaches are inconsistently implemented. One reason is that “culture” is often vaguely defined. This conceptual paper draws from anthropology to present a measurable definition of culture and offers research questions and measurement tools for investigators who conduct research and evaluation in culturally diverse settings with people who use drugs. In summary, our approach aims to increase cultural competency by helping investigators avoid generalizations that promote stereotypes and move towards creating more inclusive and therapeutic treatment services and public health interventions.