Minority mental health patients face many health inequities and inequalities that may stem from implicit bias and a lack of cultural awareness from their healthcare providers. I analyzed the current literature evaluating implicit bias among healthcare providers and culturally specific life traumas that Latinos and African Americans face that can impact their mental health. Additionally, I researched a current mental health assessments tool, the Child and Adolescent Trauma Survey (CATS), and evaluated it for the use on Latino and African American patients. Face-to-face interviews with two healthcare providers were also used to analyze the CATS for its’ applicability to Latino and African American patients. Results showed that these assessments were not sufficient in capturing culturally specific life traumas of minority patients. Based on the literature review and analysis of the interviews with healthcare providers, a novel assessment tool, the Culturally Traumatic Events Questionnaire (CTEQ), was created to address the gaps that currently make up other mental health assessment tools used on minority patients.

Heart Rate Variability is a measurement of the autonomic response to stimulation or the body's ability to adapt to changes in stimuli. Heart rate variability is a representation of stress reaction of the body, and so a higher heart rate variability is a higher overall state of health and higher resilience. Furthermore, with increased availability of devices, heart rate variability can be utilized to track and measure health, wellness and fitness. Therefore, there is great potential for application of heart rate variability to track levels of performance and adaptation to stress and training loads. Heart rate variability can be a very useful for individuals to have a greater understanding of overall resilience.