Global migration continues to increase, and with it comes increasing linguistic diversity. This presents obvious challenges for both healthcare provider and patient, and the chapters in this volume represent a range of international perspectives on language barriers in health care. A variety of factors influence the best ways of approaching and overcoming these language barriers, including cultural, geographical, political and practical considerations, and as a result a range of approaches and solutions are suggested and discussed. The authors in this volume discuss a wide range of countries and languages, and cover issues that will be familiar to all healthcare practitioners, including the role of informal interpreters, interpreting in a clinical setting, bilingual healthcare practitioners and working with languages with comparatively small numbers of speakers.

This edited volume demonstrates the fundamental role translation and interpreting play in multilingual crises. During the COVID-19 pandemic, limited language proficiency of the main language(s) in which information is disseminated exposed people to additional risks, and the contributors analyse risk communication plans and strategies used throughout the world to communicate measures through translation and interpreting. They show that a political willingness to understand the role of language in public health could lead local and national measures to success, sampling approaches from across four continents. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of healthcare translation and interpreting, sociolinguistics and crisis communication, as well as practitioners of risk and crisis communication and professional translators and interpreters.

It is imperative that we train leaders who are able to intervene efficiently with service users and to support a better organization of the workplace. It is especially important to look at the many issues related to postsecondary training and human resources, such as recruiting and keeping these leading professionals. Accessibility and Active Offer thus combines theory and empirical data to help future professionals understand the workplace issues of accessibility and active offer of minority-language services. This English-language adaptation of Accessibilité et offre active features an additional chapter by Richard Bourhis on issues specific to Anglophone communities in Québec. This multidisciplinary collective work is the first to unite researchers in health, social work, sociology, political science, public administration, law and education, in order to gain more thorough knowledge of linguistic issues in health and social services, as well as of active offer of French-language services. Published in English.

Winner of the NCA Health Communication 2021 Distinguished Book Award. This book examines interpreter-mediated medical encounters and focuses primarily on the phenomenon of bilingual health care. It highlights the interactive and coordinated nature of interpreter-mediated interactions. Elaine Hsieh has put together over 15 hours of interpreter-mediated medical encounters, interview data with 26 interpreters from 17 different cultures/languages, 39 health care providers from 5 clinical specialties, and surveys of 293 providers from 5 clinical specialties. The depth and richness of the data allows for the presentation of a theoretical framework that is not restricted by language combination or clinical contexts. This will be the first book of its kind that includes not only interpreters’ perspectives but also the needs and perspectives of providers from various clinical specialties. Bilingual Health Communication presents an opportunity to lay out a new theoretical framework related to bilingual health care and connects the latest findings from multiple disciplines. This volume presents future research directions that promise development for both theory and practice in the field.

The aging and evolving racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population has the United States in the midst of a profound demographic shift and health care organizations face many issues as they move to address and adapt to this change. In their drive to adequately serve increasingly diverse communities, health care organizations are searching for approaches that will enable them to provide information and service to all persons, regardless of age, race, cultural background, or language skills, in a manner that facilitates understanding and use of that information to make appropriate health decisions. To better understand how the dynamic forces operating in health care today impact the delivery of services in a way that is health literate, culturally competent, and in an appropriate language for patients and their families, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conducted a public workshop on the integration of health literacy, cultural competency, and language access services. Participants discussed skills and competencies needed for effective health communication, including health literacy, cultural competency, and language access services; interventions and strategies for integration; and differing perspectives such as providers and systems, patients and families, communities, and payers. This report summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) administers two programs that provide benefits based on disability: the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. This report analyzes health care utilizations as they relate to impairment severity and SSA's definition of disability. Health Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination identifies types of utilizations that might be good proxies for "listing-level" severity; that is, what represents an impairment, or combination of impairments, that are severe enough to prevent a person from doing any gainful activity, regardless of age, education, or work experience.

This edited collection brings together new research on public service interpreting and translation (PSIT) with a focus on ideology, ethics and policy development. The contributions provide fresh theoretical and empirical perspectives on the inconsistencies in translation and interpreting provision observed in different geonational contexts and the often-reported tensions between prescribed approaches to ethics and practitioner experience. The discussions are set against the backdrop of developments in rights-based discourses on language support services and the professionalisation of the field, drawing attention to how stakeholders and interpreting practitioners navigate the realities of service in the context of shifting ideological landscapes. Particular innovations in the collection include theorisations about policy and practice that draw on political science, applied ethics and paradigms of trauma-informed care. The volume also presents research on settings that have received limited attention to date such as prison and charitable services for survivors of violence and trauma.

This scholarly book focuses on stroke in Africa. Stroke is a leading cause of disability among adults of all ages, contributing significantly to health care costs related to long term implications, particularly if rehabilitation is sub-optimal. Given the burden of stroke in Africa, there is a need for a book that focuses on functioning African stroke survivors and the implications for rehabilitation within the African context. In addition, there is a need to progress with contextualised, person-centred, evidence-based guidance for the rehabilitation of people with stroke in Africa, thereby enabling them to lead socially and economically meaningful lives. The research incorporated in the book used a range of primary and secondary methodological approaches (scoping reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, descriptive studies, surveys, health economics, and clinical practice guideline methodology) to shed new insights into African-centred issues and strategies to optimise function post-stroke.

In the United States, health care devices, technologies, and practices are rapidly moving into the home. The factors driving this migration include the costs of health care, the growing numbers of older adults, the increasing prevalence of chronic conditions and diseases and improved survival rates for people with those conditions and diseases, and a wide range of technological innovations. The health care that results varies considerably in its safety, effectiveness, and efficiency, as well as in its quality and cost. Health Care Comes Home reviews the state of current knowledge and practice about many aspects of health care in residential settings and explores the short- and long-term effects of emerging trends and technologies. By evaluating existing systems, the book identifies design problems and imbalances between technological system demands and the capabilities of users. Health Care Comes Home recommends critical steps to improve health care in the home. The book's recommendations cover the regulation of health care technologies, proper training and preparation for people who provide in-home care, and how existing housing can be modified and new accessible housing can be better designed for residential health care. The book also identifies knowledge gaps in the field and how these can be addressed through research and development initiatives. Health Care Comes Home lays the foundation for the integration of human health factors with the design and implementation of home health care devices, technologies, and practices. The book describes ways in which the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and federal housing agencies can collaborate to improve the quality of health care at home. It is also a valuable resource for residential health care providers and caregivers.

Americans are accustomed to anecdotal evidence of the health care crisis. Yet, personal or local stories do not provide a comprehensive nationwide picture of our access to health care. Now, this book offers the long-awaited health equivalent of national economic indicators. This useful volume defines a set of national objectives and identifies indicatorsâ€"measures of utilization and outcomeâ€"that can "sense" when and where problems occur in accessing specific health care services. Using the indicators, the committee presents significant conclusions about the situation today, examining the relationships between access to care and factors such as income, race, ethnic origin, and location. The committee offers recommendations to federal, state, and local agencies for improving data collection and monitoring. This highly readable and well-organized volume will be essential for policymakers, public health officials, insurance companies, hospitals, physicians and nurses, and interested individuals.