Culture is not a barrier — it's information.
"My culture doesn't allow me to share my information. So if I'm sick, I'm not telling anyone."
That's what one of the women in my doctoral research told me.
She wasn't being difficult. She wasn't disengaged. She was navigating a system that was never designed with her in mind.
Here's what many institutions don't realize: for a significant number of international students — especially those from collectivist cultures — disclosing illness is not just uncomfortable. It can feel like a betrayal of family, a source of shame, or simply something that is not done.
And the accommodation systems in many higher education institutions? They assume disclosure is easy. They require documentation. They require a paper trail. For a student whose diagnosis happened in Ghana, Nigeria, or Togo — that trail may not exist in a format U.S. institutions recognize.
I know this firsthand. I was born with sickle cell disease. I had been navigating it my entire life before I arrived in the U.S. as a student. And when I learned what "disability accommodations" required? I never applied. The documentation process alone felt like a wall I didn't have the bandwidth to climb.
So what can faculty and staff actually do?
→ Build flexibility into your syllabi before students have to ask for it.
→ Normalize wellness check-ins without requiring disclosure.
→ Stop assuming silence means "doing fine."
→ Ask your disability services office: are our processes accessible to international students? The answer is probably no.
Culture is not a barrier we work around. It is information we need to design better systems.
#HigherEducation #ChronicIllness #InternationalStudents #HealthEquity #StudentSuccess #DEI #SickleCellDisease