Managing diabetes in a healthcare system that doesn’t cater to your linguistic or cultural needs is a challenging position to be in. This is why the LatinX Diabetes Clinic in Seattle offers bilingual and bicultural care to Latino patients with diabetes and prediabetes.
The LatinX Diabetes Clinic opened in November 2020 at UW Medicine’s South Lake Union campus as a branch of the larger UW Diabetes Institute Clinic. All LatinX Diabetes Clinic providers speak Spanish, and patients receive culturally relevant advice, particularly regarding diet and nutrition.
Lorena Alarcon-Casas Wright, director and founder of the LatinX Diabetes Clinic, said the idea for the clinic came from her background as a Latina and endocrinologist.
“On my dad’s side, there’s a strong family history of diabetes,” she said. “Then, during my fellowship of endocrinology, which is the speciality that studies hormones and metabolism, [I learned] the most common metabolic disease is diabetes. So then, as a Latina with a family history [of diabetes] studying diabetes, I realized that diabetes is a huge problem … in the Latino community.”
According to the Office of Minority Health, U.S. Hispanic adults were 60% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes by a physician than non-Hispanic white adults in 2022 and 1.5 times more likely to die from diabetes than non-Hispanic whites in 2020. While many factors contribute to this outcome for Latinos and Hispanics, a lack of access to linguistically and culturally appropriate healthcare is prominent among them.
The LatinX Diabetes Clinic’s mission to eliminate language and cultural barriers has received great feedback from the Latino community, according to Wright.
“Patients are very happy to have a provider who speaks their language, because even with the use of interpreters, sometimes things are lost,” she said. “Translation is just not the same.”
While making a clinic that is linguistically and culturally accessible for Latinos is the main goal of the LatinX Diabetes Clinic, the staff also strive to make the clinic accessible in other ways.
“We are not just focusing [on telling patients], ‘Okay you have to take these pills,’” Wright said. “Rather, we really try to explore what else we can do to make it less hard and less difficult to have diabetes under control … Patients really love it when they feel that, ‘They’re listening to me, and they’re going to help me.’”
Mikaela Freundlich, a master’s student in the UW School of Social Work and social work intern at the LatinX Diabetes Clinic, said she assists patients who lack health insurance with applying for UW Medicine’s financial assistance program. Many of the clinic’s patients don’t have insurance due to being undocumented or unable to afford it, she said.
A lack of transportation access can also present a challenge for some patients. The location of the LatinX Diabetes Clinic in South Lake Union is accessible by public transportation via the Seattle Streetcar’s South Lake Union line. This line, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation, connects the area to other public transit systems such as the Link light rail, Monorail, and Metro Transit.
Freundlich said she further connects patients with transportation resources depending on their specific needs. This includes helping patients apply for Hopelink’s Non-Emergency Medical Transportation system, which allows people to request rides for medical services covered by Medicaid, or King County Metro’s reduced fare options.
“For some folks, it’s just as simple as [helping] them get a reduced fare ORCA card, and it just makes their day,” Freundlich said. “It might be a task that’s simpler for us, but maybe, for them, because of all these layers of stress, it’s the last thing on their mind.”
According to Wright, the clinic’s patient attendance demonstrates appreciation for these efforts, with a low rate of no-shows.
Other cities across the U.S. have seen similar initiatives to Seattle’s LatinX Diabetes Clinic being implemented. The Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston has its own Latinx Diabetes Clinic, and UC Irvine launched an initiative in 2023 to address diabetes in Orange County’s Latino population.
Wright said she wants clinics like these to notice and emulate the practices that have worked for the LatinX Diabetes Clinic.
“My hope is also that our clinic, because it’s been so successful, is also a model for other clinics to target populations that need more tailored care,” she said.
However, the LatinX Diabetes Clinic isn’t without its own challenges. Wright said the clinic still lacks robust mental health resources.
“It would be great if we had more resources to hire a social worker or have more resources to provide mental health services, because diabetes, being a chronic disease, has a toll on mental health,” she said.
Wright also said the clinic has limited reach with rural Latino communities in Washington, who are more likely to face language and cultural barriers in healthcare. To reach these more vulnerable populations, she said the clinic is working to expand its telehealth services.
The current political climate has been another concern for the LatinX Diabetes Clinic. Wright said she was worried patients would stop attending their appointments out of fear they could be a target of deportation.
Despite this, Wright said she hasn’t noticed the number of patients diminish.
“I would like to think that is because we work really hard building trust,” she said. “We are very clear to patients when we instruct them on their rights that nobody could come to our clinic, for example, and have access to where the patients are … unless there is a warrant.”
Looking to the future, Wright said the LatinX Diabetes Clinic is working to establish a satellite clinic in South Seattle where there is a larger Latino population.
Ultimately, Freundlich said the type of care the LatinX Diabetes Clinic offers makes Latinos feel more seen in a healthcare system that often neglects their needs.
“Being familiar with Latino culture allows me to bring in that element of culture into the space, which can feel very responsive for a lot of people who already face so many barriers to get into that room with me or with the doctor,” Freundlich said.
Cassie Diamond is a junior at the University of Washington double majoring in Journalism and Public Interest Communication and Political Science. She is passionate about telling stories that spread awareness about pressing issues and is interested in political and environmental topics.
Cassie was a student in Hugo Balta‘s solutions journalism class at UW. Balta, an accredited solutions journalism trainer with the Solutions Journalism Network, is the Publisher of the Latino News Network.