Patients and families with limited English proficiency (LEP) face barriers to health care service access, experience lower quality care, suffer worse outcomes. LEP is an independent driver of disparities exacerbates other social determinants health. Disparities due language are particularly unjust because morally irrelevant a source unfair, unnecessary disadvantage. Clinicians organizations hav...

COMMENTARY " The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. " —Mark Twain I f 77-year-old Guadalupe has never had a seizure in her life, why has she just been discharged from the hospital after a seizure medication overdose? To answer that question, let us retrace the steps of an elderly Spanish-speaking patient through...

Latino immigrants have recently spread beyond traditional US enclaves to “emerging destinations.” The arrival of limited English proficiency (LEP) Spanish-speakers to these areas can challenge the health care system, as translation services may not be readily available for LEP patients. Trained auditors posed as family members of LEP patients seeking primary care in a safety net setting. We fou...

OBJECTIVE To examine pediatrician weight-management communication with overweight Latino children and their parents and whether communication differs by pediatrician-patient language congruency. METHODS Mixed-methods analysis of video-recorded primary care visits with overweight 6- to 12-year-old children. Three independent reviewers used video/transcript data to identify American Academy of ...

Quality health care relies upon communication in a patient's preferred language. Language access in health care occurs when individuals are: (1) Welcomed by providers regardless of language ability; and (2) Offered quality language services as part of their care. Federal law generally requires access to health care and quality language services for deaf and Limited English Proficient (LEP) pati...

The authors examined the relationship between low health literacy (LHL), limited English proficiency (LEP), and meeting current U.S. Preventive Service Task Force colorectal cancer (CRC) screening guidelines for Asians and Whites in California. For 1,478 Asian and 14,410 White respondents 50-75 years of age in the 2007 California Health Interview Survey, the authors examined meeting CRC screeni...

OBJECTIVE The number of individuals with limited English proficiency in the USA is large and rapidly growing. Consequently, addressing language barriers in access to medical care is becoming increasingly important. Previous studies have reported that individuals with limited English proficiency have more difficulty gaining access to care, compared to English-proficient individuals. We assessed ...

An eye tracking experiment examined how exposure to a second language (L2) influences sentence parsing in the first language. Forty-four monolingual Spanish speakers, 24 proficient Spanish–English bilinguals with limited immersion experience in the L2 environment and 20 proficient Spanish–English bilinguals with extensive L2 immersion experience read temporarily ambiguous constructions. The amb...