B3 – La Salud no Tiene Idioma: Using language to Address Healthcare Disparities in the Latinx Community

Summary

While the Latinx community continues to grow in the US (including workforce, small businesses, and college students), disparities in access and quality of healthcare have remained stable over the last two decades (Vega, et al., 2009). Research highlights low access to healthcare, low cultural sensitivity in health providers, and language differences as the main barriers to address health disparities (Velasco-Mondragon, et al., 2016). In East TN, Cherokee Health Systems (FQHC and CHC) provides services to the Latinx community across 11 counties. In the counties with the highest concentration of Latinx patients, CHS services 17.29 to 36.42% of the Latinx population. This study aims to address the role of cultural brokers, Spanish-speaking behavioral providers, and in-person interpreters in engagement of healthcare. The sample will consist of at least 150 individuals (including foreign- and US-born nationals) whose primary language is Spanish and receive services by CHS’s interdisciplinary team. The study will compare two samples (those with cultural brokers as part of their care team and those without) using an independent-samples t-test. It is hypothesized that having access to Spanish-speaking providers and cultural brokers increases patients’ engagement in care (as measured by attendance to scheduled appointments) and helps discover needs that can be addressed by a culturally-sensitive integrated team (as measured by collaboration from multi-disciplinary team members).