A visit to the hospital can already be a stressful event for many. For those in the Seattle Latino community, language and cultural barriers present in the healthcare system can make the process even more daunting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Leo Morales, a healthcare provider at UW Medicine\u2019s LatinX Diabetes Clinic<\/u><\/a> and co-director of the Latino Center for Health<\/u><\/a>, communication difficulties are one of the most obvious barriers in healthcare for Latinos with limited English proficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are few bilingual, bicultural healthcare providers of any kind in [Washington],\u201d he said. \u201cSo, for the most part, people who are limited English proficient and Spanish-speaking encounter all sorts of barriers to accessing care, starting with entering into a building or trying to make a phone call to make an appointment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Latinos and Hispanics make up 14.6% of Washington\u2019s population and 8.2% of Seattle\u2019s population. The agency<\/u> also reported that 9% of Washington\u2019s total population speaks Spanish at home, with 40% of this demographic speaking English less than \u201cvery well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the healthcare system often tries to accommodate non-English speakers by using interpreters, Morales said he finds such solutions to be imperfect at best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn terms of patient interactions, it\u2019s a much different thing to have an interaction in someone\u2019s native language than it is through an interpreter,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not uncommon, for example, as a provider, to have somebody interpret, and this interpreter will have an entire conversation with a person and then turn around and give you a yes\/no answer. And it\u2019s like, wait a minute, what happened?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cultural barriers can also present a challenge in a healthcare setting for Latinos, particularly regarding food and nutrition, according to Morales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For instance, he said those being treated for diabetes, a disease that disproportionately affects U.S. Latinos<\/u><\/a> according to the Centers for Disease Control, will usually be provided nutrition education focused on foods associated with white American culture. However, some Latinos, particularly those who are first-generation, may lack familiarity with American foods or even access to those foods, depending on where they live, Morales said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you go to South Seattle, for example, if you go to Burien or White Center, you\u2019ll find Mexican markets,\u201d he said. \u201cWalk into a Mexican market after you\u2019ve walked into a QFC, or Whole Foods, or Metropolitan Market, and you will understand what cultural difference is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emely Diaz Barragan, a graduate student in the UW School of Public Health and intern for the Latino Center for Health, said certain cultural nuances can get lost when translating from Spanish to English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For instance, she said the Spanish saying \u201cla voluntad de Dios,\u201d which roughly translates to \u201clet God\u2019s will be done\u201d in English, often gets misinterpreted by those unfamiliar with the spiritual and religious values of Hispanic Latinos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf you say that to, for example, a white-presenting therapist with Americanized, westernized ideals, a lot of times they will take that and be like \u2018Oh, they must be suicidal,\u2019\u201d Barragan said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s like, no. We just always say that to people that we care about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n These kinds of barriers can lead to frustration, confusion, lower quality care, and negative health outcomes for Latinos. For example, a study<\/u> found that 29% of Spanish-speaking patients reported that their medical problems were not addressed after a doctor\u2019s appointment, compared to 10% of English-speaking patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ricardo Moreno Garcia, a graduate student in the UW Department of Global Health, recalled his family\u2019s own experiences with healthcare barriers following their move from Mexico to the Tri-Cities area in Washington about nine years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Garcia\u2019s father had an illness in his gallbladder that required surgery. However, he and his family were kicked out of the hospital because they didn\u2019t speak any English. A month later, Garcia\u2019s father collapsed, and he was rushed to the emergency room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By this point, Garcia, who was 15 years old at the time, had learned some English and was able to act as a translator. Even so, Garcia had a very low-level understanding of English, making it difficult to translate the more complex medical terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While his father\u2019s surgery ultimately went well, Garcia said he left the experience feeling many new emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was feeling anxious, I was feeling depressed, I was feeling sad, angry, and even, to a point, I was feeling used,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cI was feeling that I was useless because I wasn\u2019t able to help my family. I wasn\u2019t able to help my dad because we didn\u2019t know how to speak English in that moment, and that happened and is still happening right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Morales said that Seattle, as a large urban city, has more resources to reduce these barriers than underserved rural areas, where these issues are more prominent. Even so, he said many Seattle Latinos still fall through the cracks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While circumstances may differ among each individual Latino, Latino immigrants are generally the ones who encounter language and cultural barriers in healthcare the most, according to Morales. However, recent actions taken by President Donald Trump\u2019s administration may only reinforce such barriers for this already vulnerable demographic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are concerns that Trump\u2019s executive order designating English as the official language of the United States could reduce multilingual resources<\/u><\/a> in sectors such as healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat\u2019s been a guiding principle for healthcare organizations is they need to provide language access of the language that their patients speak,\u201d Morales said. \u201cThat\u2019s always been the expectation. I don\u2019t know how making English officially the language of the country changes that expectation, and that would be my concern there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Morales said he is also concerned that pre-existing financial barriers combined with the increased threat of deportation will further discourage Latino immigrants from visiting the doctor\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nevertheless, there are organizations within Seattle working to reduce the language and cultural barriers faced by Latinos in healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The LatinX Diabetes Clinic, a subdivision of the UW Diabetes Institute Clinic, provides linguistically and culturally accessible care for Spanish-speaking Latino patients with diabetes. Additionally, the Latino Center for Health partners with community-based organizations to bring healthcare to hard-to-reach Latino populations in both rural and urban settings in Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, Garcia said the push to address these kinds of healthcare barriers should primarily be coming from the local and state governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPeople in charge of clinics and hospitals should make this change,\u201d he said. \u201cBut who will make them do that change will be the senators, will be people with higher power, like the local government [and] Washington government.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Morales said the issue of language and cultural barriers in healthcare is complicated, but the solution often gets reduced to simply providing more interpreters. Because of this, he said, a human element to this problem is often overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think you can lose the humanity of people when they\u2019re ill, when any of us are ill,\u201d Morales said. \u201cThe inability to access care for fear, or, even when people are accessing care, just not getting the kind of care that they should get because [they\u2019re] running into barriers or not understanding how to navigate the system [means] people die sooner because of it \u2026 These are individuals, peoples, families, and they are in the fabric of our society. If you look around anywhere, you will see immigrants doing the work that needs to be done and doing it well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassie Diamond <\/strong>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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cassie is a student in\u00a0Hugo Balta<\/a>‘s solutions journalism class at UW. Balta, is the Publisher of Washington Latino News, and an accredited solutions journalism trainer with the\u00a0Solutions Journalism Network<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" President Trump\u2019s executive order designating English as the official language of the US could reduce multilingual resources in healthcare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":5062679,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","ghostkit_customizer_options":"","ghostkit_custom_css":"","ghostkit_custom_js_head":"","ghostkit_custom_js_foot":"","ghostkit_typography":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center 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