Language Access Program

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Recommended: Bilingual Health Communication and Medical Interpreters

Our Language Access program continues to make a positive impact on the Health and Human Services delivery system in Palm Beach County by developing medical interpreting knowledge for bi-lingual staff, enhancing the language skill-set of English-only key staff, improving the Health/Human service providers’ linguistically appropriate services, and helping bi-lingual volunteers to make life better for our communities.

Although we have been providing training on interpreting skills to bi-lingual staff, this time our efforts focused on students entering or enrolled on the medical services professions. To that end, we contacted all our local Colleges and Universities having medical services programs. They were a key element on attracting these young future professionals. So far we provided two Medical Interpreting trainings (March 29th to April 2nd, June 21st to 25th) and a one-day intensive MI training on March 13th. Out of the 50 participants that passed the post-test, 22 were students from various academic entities (South University, Palm Beach State College, Keiser College, and Lake Worth Medical Magnet HS). These students felt that these skills will enrich their professions and be a nice addition to their resume. Our collaboration with these academic institutions has been a key factor to our success. In light of this effort, we have asked Palm Beach State College to provide CEU’s (Continuing Education Units) for our Medical Interpreting class. We feel that providing CEU’s to the medical services profession will enhance the attractiveness of our program and bring in more bi-lingual professionals to the Medical Interpreting World. We are awaiting feedback from Palm Beach State College in this matter and look forward to partnering ...

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... goal for this initiative is two-fold; one, to fill a needed gap for interpreters in Medical facilities and two, to improve the health disparities for our LEP population. So far, we have trained 14 bi-lingual community volunteers and place 9 volunteers in two medical facilities; Caridad Clinic and C.L. Brumback Health Center on a regular basis. Our next step is to place these volunteers at Emergency Rooms in Hospitals and Clinics.

Language Access is only a meaningful component of the overall quest to provide culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services (CLAS) in Palm Beach County. However, by providing Medical Interpretation training, Basic Language Skills classes, and support for interpretation and translation services to health and human service providers we get a little closer of closing the gap in health disparities and thus improving health outcomes.

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