Revisiting the Rainbow: Culturally Responsive Updates to a Standard Clinical Resource

Abstract

Purpose: Cultural responsivity is essential for efficacious and affirming clinical relationships. This may be especially important with historically marginalized clients, such as transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) people seeking behaviorally based affirming communication services. We recommend modifications to standard tools for diagnostics and training that otherwise might undermine our efforts to create an inclusive and affirming environment.

Method: Modifications to the Rainbow Passage, a standardized paragraph utilized for eliciting speech samples in clinical settings, focused on nongendered terminology and the elimination of content with religious connotations.

Results: The recommended edits to the Rainbow Passage maintain similar length, cadence, and phonetic balance while considering cultural and health care context for TGD people and other clients.

Conclusion: Simple linguistic changes to a standardized paragraph maintain clinical benefits and facilitate SLP efforts toward cultural responsivity, client engagement, and good clinical outcomes.