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Archive for the ‘Language Services’ Category

“Hospitals Making Progress on Health Care Disparities”- Reading between the Lines

Posted in Advocacy, Discrimination, Ethics, Health Disparities, Healthcare Inequalities, Hispanic/Latino, Immigrants, Language Access, Language Services, Limited English Proficiency, Paitent safety, Patient Safety, Translation on 30 November 2014| Leave a Comment »

In recent weeks I’ve received email alerts announcing  “Hospitals Making Progress on Health Care Disparities“, a new study from the American Hospital Association’s Hospitals in Pursuit of Excellence program and associated organizations.   I took a look  first at the infographic accompanying the notices, and then at the published study itself, the 2013 Diversity and Disparities: A Benchmark Study of U.S. Hospitals. It was no surprise to read that the demographic profile of hospital executives and boards is still so far from representative of  the general  population, since the last HPoE study in 2011. However, the 2013 study reports data on language services in hospitals that raised my eyebrows ( 2011 comparison data points shown in parentheses):   EquityofCareStudy

  • 95%  (90%) are collecting data on primary language of patients
  • 87% (80%) are translating forms and documents for patients
  • 66% (61%) collected information on patient language needs

Leaving aside the matter of ascertaining the difference between collecting “primary language of patient” and “patient language needs,” these highly encouraging results led me to seek details in the source report. Having recently done extensive research for my own presentation on the status of  language services in healthcare for the 2014 WASCLA Summit, the HPoE findings seemed even more amazing. What I found in the report itself , which did conclude that more needs to be done to achieve equity of care in the broader sense, was that some basic background and research points seemed not to have been included or were too limited in scope to be meaningful.  For example,  the report did not include the list of hospitals which had participated in the survey, nor how the recent cohort compares to the 2011 and 2009 participant groups. There was no discussion of the statistical validity of the response rate of 1109 hospitals (~19% of all 5922 AHA member hospitals invited to participate), nor how representative the response sample is for hospitals nationwide. For example, while the study noted that all data was self-reported,  there was no mention of the possibility that only hospitals which have disparities reduction initiatives chose to participate.  I am pursuing the actual data used for the study, and hope to have information to share soon.

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Around Washington: End of the Year News Scan

Posted in Access to Medicines, Advocacy, Conflicts of Interest, Consumer Protection, Economics of Health Care, End of Life, Ethics, Health Care Reform, Healthcare Inequalities, Immigrants, Language Services, Lobbying, Patient Safety, Prescription drugs, Promotions, State of Washington on 28 December 2013| Leave a Comment »

Old US Public Health Service Hospital (known as Pacific Tower during its tenure as Amazon HQ building) to become new satellite campus for allied health professions programs of Seattle Central Community College and serve as site for public agencies and NGOs. AmazonBeaconHillHQ*304

Seattleite Jeanne Sather, author of Assertive Cancer patient  blog ,died from metastatic breast cancer  15 years after her original diagnosis

In June the King County Board of Health unanimously approved creation of drug take-back system for county residents , to be financed by a 2-cent per Rx tax. On Dec. 1, PhRMA filed a lawsuit against King County , claiming that the plan causes a financial burden for patients and that in-home disposal of  medicines is the best way to keep Rx drugs out of the wrong hands.

State to review hospital affiliations — Catholic and otherwise

Public hospital CEO gets pay cut to $1 M per year, at Renton’s Valley Medical Center

Harborview to close  pediatrics, women’s, & family clinics

Health Care Reform for American Indians and Alaska Natives 2013  including WA-specific page

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WA Healthplanfinder Updates

Posted in Advocacy, Assistance, Discrimination, Ethics, Global Health, Health Care Marketing, Health Care Reform, Health Disparities, Health Insurance, Health Literacy, Healthcare Inequalities, Hispanic/Latino, Immigrants, Language Access, Language Services, Limited English Proficiency, Medicaid, Promotions, State of Washington, Translation on 20 December 2013| Leave a Comment »

Consumer info fact sheets  translated into WA’s threshold written languages   (Chinese, Lao, Khmer ( Cambodian), Korean, Russian,  Somali, Spanish, and Vietnamese) were posted on Dec. 16, just one week before the deadline to start an application for coverage to be effective Jan. 1, 2014. In an unrelated development, HBE  decided on this brief extension  for completing applications due to various  problems people have had in being able to use the online forms and or access phone customer services.  Regarding the translated fact sheets, it’s taken almost 6 months for their publication to replace the original problematic versions that were taken down from the site.
However, the new fact sheets are not easy to find as they are not posted on the consumer website,  but located exclusively on the HBE corporate website.  The corporate site features a line at top right-hand side of homepage entitled “Information in Other  Languages” which links to the fact sheets page, plus also links out to the consumer website.  In contrast, the consumer Healthplanfinder site (which is in both  English and Spanish) does not offer any such subject line, nor does it display a link to corporate site.  The Healthplanfinder site likewise does not contain any readily visible clear statement of consumer  language access or disability access rights, except for a message in tiny font on bottom of the homepage that says [sic] : If you need additional language or disability accomodations, you may call 1-855-WAFINDER (1-855-923-4633).   On the Spanish version of the website, this statement illustrates yet another example of  faulty translation, as the term “disability accomodation” is twice translated, and very ungrammatically, as  “discapacidad alojamiento”  which means disability lodging.  Sure enough, a quick check on Google Translate  English > Spanish reveals  “lodging” as the first  translation for “accommodation.”  Since 2012 advocates had been recommending the inclusion of multilingual tag lines and/or translated summaries sections for the website. Interpretersymbol

Information on some metrics for the Healthplanfinder call center became available last week with the release of the  November Healthplanfinder Data Report. On the language access side of things (p.10 of the report)  the numbers are not encouraging: the call center received almost 12,000 calls in Spanish, but handled only some 1600 of them. The call center in Spokane has bilingual Spanish-English staff (reported as 6 out of 80 employees at start-up) on site and routes calls in other languages to a telephonic interpreter service. For calls in all languages besides Spanish combined, 1045 were actually handled (answered)out of 3621 calls attempted. The report does not state if the multilingual calls are included in the totals for approximately 35,000 calls  handled in November or the almost  158,000 calls throttled (deflected from the system, i.e. not put into the queue to await a response).  While the HBE is said to be increasing staffing for the call center,  any increases planned for its language capacity are as yet unknown. Given the demand, it would seem that Spanish-speaking callers too could benefit from immediate access to interpreter services.

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Translations for WA Health Benefit Exchange Still a Struggle

Posted in Advocacy, Discrimination, Global Health, Health Care Marketing, Health Care Reform, Health Disparities, Health Insurance, Health Literacy, Healthcare Inequalities, Hispanic/Latino, Immigrants, Language Access, Language Services, Limited English Proficiency, Medicaid, State of Washington, Translation, tagged , , , , on 10 December 2013| Leave a Comment »

The irony was not lost for me that while writing on the positive results of the FDA’s use of  translation services, that here in my state, once known as a national leader in language services, we are still struggling to get quality translations for our Health Benefits Exchange (HBE).  The efforts  to achieve this goal have been a major focus for the Washington State Coalition for Language Access, and its been a year now since we co-authored with Northwest Health Law Advocates the report Language Access in Washington under the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act  expressly for the HBE efforts. Now with 175,000 enrollees, Washington State deserves the praise it’s getting for the record-breaking enrollment figures in the new health insurance  marketplace Washington Healthplanfinder, WA_Healthplanfinder_RGBespecially compared to the situation in neighboring Oregon and to the federal Healthcare.gov platform. But the picture is much less rosy regarding providing equal access for Washingtonians with limited English proficiency (LEP), who now number some 8% of state population or half-million residents, representing an increase of 210 % in the past decade . Demographic data on enrollees is said not to be available.

We are now less than 2 weeks away from the enrollment deadline for coverage to start Jan. 1, 2014, and the consumer fact sheets that were intended to inform the public of the options under the ACA have not yet been made available to Washington’s LEP population. Even though work began in July to replace the problematic original translations – errors brought to HBE’s attention by advocates- there are still no consumer fact sheets available in Washington’s  threshold languages ( in written form these are: Chinese, Lao, Khmer, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Somali, and Vietnamese).

In addition, the Spanish versions of the paper application for Healthplanfinder, while continuing to be publicly available, have contained horrific translation errors.  In the section  which inquires about the applicant’s citizenship status, the phrase ” Non-citizen legally present in the US”  was translated into Spanish to mean just the opposite,  i.e., the translation says “ non-citizen not legally present….”  ACA, complete with the  I-word in Spanish in version #1.  After the mistake was identified on Oct. 15 , again by advocates,  staff said they took immediate action to have the vendor correct it.  The screenshots included here show the sections containing the mistranslations.

Spanish version #1

And yet, advocates identified that the new translation contained the same error, just written with different wording.   Here is Spanish version #2, as it appeared on Nov. 14: Screen shot 2013-12-05 at 11.00.31 AM

This one particular error may now have been recently corrected  for a 3rd iteration, through volunteer  efforts of local language access advocates trying to beat the clock to help consumers. However, we hear anecdotally that more translation concerns persist and can’t be confident that there are not similar errors in the translations in the other languages.

What remains a mystery is how this sorry state of affairs has come about, and if there were ever robust quality assurance measures in the procurement chain for the translations. It is beyond comprehension how such blatant errors could be made given that the work was done by vendors holding official State contracts who must affirm that they use  qualified translators and proper translation procedures. And if this is happening in Spanish, the 2nd most used language in both our State and nationally,  and thus one for which there is an ample number of nationally-certified translators available to do the work, there is a real reason to fear that similar egregious errors may exist in other language translations.

Shortly before Thanksgiving, HBE staffers announced  at a meeting of its Health Equity Technical Advisory Committee, that work halted back in June to create a Language Access Plan  (LAP) for the HBE requested by the TAC , will resume in the new year.  LAPs are meant to serve as blueprints to guide the work of agencies and programs to comply with the laws requiring they provide language services, and  to help prevent the kind of  problems that we’ve being seeing here in the other Washington.  I’ll continue to report on the work in progress.

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A Honey of a Translation

Posted in Consumer Protection, Environmental Health, Ethics, FDA, Global Health, Health Care Marketing, Hispanic/Latino, Language Services, Paitent safety, Patient Safety, Promotions, Translation on 9 December 2013| 3 Comments »

Two recent news stories about honey, illustrate yet again the vital importance of communications to health.  In these completely unrelated cases, it was all about translations, the rendering of messages from one written language to another. The fraudsters seemed to have assumed they could get away with selling their products to unsuspecting consumers due to a lack of language skills on the part of regulatory authorities.

In September,  Bloomberg Businessweek  broke the story on a honey scandal at the global level with an article entitled The Honey Launderers: Uncovering the Largest Food Fraud in U.S. History , describing a convoluted plot by German company ALW to sell millions of pounds of Chinese honey in the US, by disguising its origins.  Over the course of several years, ALW arranged with the Chinese brokers to channel their product through other countries, where it was filtered, doused with additives to disguise its unpleasant  flavor, and re-labeled  to make it seem to have come from nations authorized to export honey to the US.  Some of the adulterated honey was also found to contain residues of the antibiotic chloramphenicol, long banned in the US.  The impetus for the fraud was purely financial , as honey fetches top dollar in this country, the major world consumer.  Over a decade ago when domestic beekeepers complained that honey imports from China were seriously undercutting their business, the US imposed such stiff tariffs on Chinese honey imports that little enters the country legally any more. But the super-cheap price of honey in China has remained a lure for international exporters. Some Chinese feat_honey39chart_630producers seize this opportunity to increase their own profits by artificially  increasing the quantity of honey available to be sold.  According to the FDA investigation of this case, a number of  techniques like harvesting the honey early and not letting the bees complete the process naturally were routinely used in China, along with machine-drying the honey to speed things along.  ALW abetted the process and instructed its 2nd-country middlemen to add  sweeteners to disguise the sour taste caused by the premature harvesting.

In order to keep the doings secret, ALW  officials exhorted the young German employees sent to run the firm’s US operations to use the phone, not emails, to discuss business and to conduct all communications in their native language.  While the staff did restrict their discussions to the German language, they continued to use emails for correspondence. Their missives were later translated into English during the course of the FDA investigation.  The federal  prosecutor who worked on the case commented:

“They were extremely sophisticated and intelligent in some ways, but so sloppy in other ways. What do they think—no one can translate German?”

Earlier in the year in a less notorious case, the honey firm Nature Nate’s in Texas garnered FDA censure because it violated the instructions issued by the FDA following a 2012 audit, when the company was ordered to stop advertising its honey in ways that characterized it as a drug, i.e. by making various health claims for its products.  While Nate’s had promised to stop the spurious marketing by Fall of 2012,  an FDA follow-up in mid-2013 found that the firm continued to make these claims on its Spanish-language website,  under the banner ” Remedios Caseros con Miel or Honey Home Remedies “, Spanish_honey_remedies describing such benefits (in English translation) as:

• “Food Poisoning. Blend 1 Tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar and 1 Tablespoon of North Dallas Honey dissolved in a glass of chilled water.”

• “‘[O]rganic honey’. A client of mine that is a doctor told me to try yours for allergy relief. It has COMPLETELY eliminated allergies for the entire household … it is our daily dose … “

A cached copy of the Spanish information on how to use Nate’s honey as an arthritis remedy said:

Para la artritis – 100% Pure Raw & Unfiltered Honey naturenates.com/espanol/para-la-artritis
“Receta 1. Tome una taza de agua caliente con dos cucharadas de miel y una cucharadita de canela en polvo por la mañana y la noche. …

FDA translation: “May Help with Arthritis. Recipe 1. Take 1 cup of hot water with two spoons of honey and one small teaspoon of cinnamon powder both morning and night. .. “

The FDA issued the new warning letter in June 2013, and Spanish version of  Nature Nate’s  website appears to have now been taken down.

And the phenomenon of the FDA using translation as an investigative tool is hopefully now a regular practice, as a evidenced by yet another recent case, this time involving the Sundial herbal supplement company which got an FDA Warning Letter based on claims made solely in Spanish which characterized its products as drugs.  As a commentator for Regulatory Affairs so aptly explained

…just because a product’s unapproved claims aren’t in English, that doesn’t mean FDA isn’t paying attention.

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ACTION ALERT: Comments Needed on Important Language Access Standard by July 25

Posted in Advocacy, Consumer Protection, Discrimination, Economics of Health Care, Health Care Marketing, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Health Literacy, Language Access, Language Services on 20 July 2011| Leave a Comment »

Several national health advocacy groups have put out an alert about some key changes to language access standards that have just been proposed for the communication responsibilities of certain federal agencies which regulate private health care plans. As we move forward towards the enactment of health care reform, it is critical that  everyone, including LEP individuals, have the same rights to get access to to plan information and help with insurance appeals.  Health insurance is of course a critical part of access to health care and thus of any individual’s health status. Communication is an essential part of health and health care.  Lack of communication access causes both personal harm and contributes to health inequalities between population groups, plus drives up health care costs for people and systems.  If the new proposed standards are enacted, they would roll back current rules which private insurance companies must follow to ensure language access for plan beneficiaries.

What you can do: there is a very short window of opportunity now available for  individuals and organizations to voice their concerns by submitting comments online to the federal government via a dedicated website.  The deadline for submissions  is 2 p.m, PDT, on Monday July 25 !

For details about this critical issue, and instructions on how to submit comments along with suggested language, please read the following memo from the National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC), the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), and the National Health Law Program (NHeLP):

URGENT: Comments Needed on Important Language Access Standard

NSCLC, APALC and NHeLP asking advocates to submit by July 25

IMPORTANT: Please provide comments to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Labor (DOL) on proposed regulations governing private health care plans.  The regulations as proposed are a significant step backward from the version issued in 2010 and affect about 12 million individuals. They change the existing standards for oral interpretation and written translation in unprecedented ways. Please send in comments now and urge colleagues and networks to also take action.  

 The deadline for submitting comments to CMS on this proposed rule is 5 pm Eastern Time on Monday, July 25, 2011.

The National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC), the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), and the National Health Law Program (NHeLP) urge you to submit comments using the guidelines below. Then, please spread the word to your listservs, networks, colleagues, and affected beneficiaries, near and far, who may care about language access issues!

Issue:  CMS, IRS and the DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) have jointly issued regulations governing the internal claims and appeals and external review processes for private group health plans and health insurance issuers (note: this does not directly impact Medicare and Medicaid plans).

These rules were first promulgated as interim final regulations in June 2010, and were relatively strong. After industry complaints, they were amended as of July 2011, and significantly watered down. The public has this opportunity to comment.

Here are the three major language access issues relating to internal claims and appeals and external review:

  1. Written translations for group health plans: The threshold for determining whether translation of vital documents is required is set at: 10% of county population for group health plans. Formerly this was at 10% of plan participants in a given language or 500 persons, whichever is less; where a group plan has less than 100 participants, 25% was used.
  2. Written translations for individual plans: The threshold for this group is also 10% of county population. This was set based on the Medicare Part C and D marketing regulation (a proposal that has since been changed as of 4/15/11 to 5%, as a result of many persons submitting comments against the 10%).  
  3. Oral interpretation: Although it has been well settled that civil rights law mandates that oral interpretation should be provided in the health and health insurance contexts for all languages, the proposed regulations set a new precedent and require oral interpretation ONLY in the languages that meet the 10% threshold.  This is a major issue that needs to be addressed.

The new proposed standards completely fail to recognize the needs of the approximately 12 million limited English proficient individuals in the United States that are estimated to be affected by these regulations. Many of these individuals may receive marketing materials and calls in their primary languages, but will not be able to access plan review and appeals under the new rules. Even Spanish speakers will be left out in most of the country, as only 172 counties meet the 10% county population threshold for Spanish (out of 3,143 counties in the United States). Besides Spanish, the new proposed translation threshold is met by Navajo in 3 counties (1 county each in AZ, NM, UT), Tagalog in 2 counties (both in AK), and Chinese in one county (CA). Only 177 counties would require translated materials. Only one county in the entire nation would have translations in more than one language: the Aleutians West Census Area (population of 5,505 total persons) would have Spanish and Tagalog translations.

We need everyone – even advocates that don’t usually work on private insurance issues and those who have never commented on a federal rule – to take action now.

What You Can Do: 

1. FILE COMMENTS:

a)   Go to   www.regulations.gov

b)   Enter keyword or ID as “group plan” and hit the “SEARCH” button

c)   Scroll down and choose “Group Health Plans and Health Insurance Issuers: Internal Claims and Appeals and External Review Processes” and click on “submit a comment” on right side

d)   Although the regulation is proposed by three agencies, you only need to submit once. The agencies will share the information.

e)   Paste in the comments below and edit them, or write your own, then “Submit.”

f)   You are not required to fill out other fields, although it may be helpful to provide your affiliation. If you wish, you may be anonymous.   Comments submitted are viewable online (after a processing period) by the general public.

SAMPLE COMMENT:

On behalf of [organization/myself], I wish to comment on the 10% threshold for translation and oral interpretation of private plan materials in the internal review and appeals contexts. I am… [add 1-2 sentences about yourself, organization or work with LEP individuals].  The 10% standard is far too high.  A more appropriate standard would be “5% of the plan’s population or 500 persons in plan’s service area, whichever is less” for large group plans, and 25% of population for small plans. Oral interpretation should be provided in all languages at all times. {Consider adding information about the impact on your clients when they cannot get documents in a language that they understand.}

2. Forward this email to all of your contacts – other advocates, providers, interpreters, beneficiaries affected, and urge them to also file comments.  The more comments filed, the more CMS/IRS/EBSA are likely to pay serious attention to this issue.

3. If you are bilingual or work with LEP populations, consider having them file comments in other languages as well as in English, for impact.

For more information about commenting and the proposed regulations, see http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D= HHS-OS-2011-0019-0001 .

For more detailed information, see the comments that NHeLP and NSCLC will be submitting, available very shortly at www.nsclc.org and www.healthlaw.org .  Please feel free to submit detailed comments if you prefer.

Katharine Hsiao  khsiao@nsclc.org

Georgia Burke  gburke@nsclc.org

Kevin Prindiville kprindiville@nsclc.org

Mara Youdelman  youdelman@healthlaw.org

Doreena Wong dwong@apalc.org

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Glimmer of Hope: Senate Votes to Tap Life Sciences Discovery Fund for WA Basic Health Program, Continue Medical Interpreter Program

Posted in Advocacy, Discrimination, DSHS budget, Economics of Health Care, Ethics, Health Disparities, Healthcare Inequalities, Language Access, Language Services, Lobbying, State of Washington on 15 February 2011| Leave a Comment »

Things are still beyond grim as the work on Washington State’s  budget continues. However, on February 4, there was a more hopeful sign when the  Senate approved its version of the Supplemental Budget, including a provision to continue the Basic Health Program, although in reduced scope, by drawing on the Life Sciences Discovery Fund. The  LSDF was established in 2005 from WA’s share of national tobacco settlement funds.  Both the Governor’s budget and the one previously approved by the House had cut  BHP, along  with the DSHS long-standing  interpreter services program for  Medicaid and CHIP patients  These potentially promising developments however have garnered less attention than another set of proposals in HB 1847 ,which would  to sustain funding for BHP by eliminating tax exemptions for Big Banking,  and sales taxes on elective cosmetic surgery and private jets. 

While advocates regard these developments as positive, the struggle is far from over. The Supplemental budget is now undergoing the reconciliation process by both houses and will needs the Governor’s approval; the Biennial budget  will have its turn next. Both contain deep cuts in virtually every area of life affecting Washingtonians, with the worst cuts affecting the most vulnerable populations, especially immigrants and refugees. WA Budget cuts 2011.

The history of these two programs is of particular note at this critical time.  The original intent of the Master Tobacco Settlement Agreement was to fund health services in the states for those affected by smoking.  At the time, Gov. Gregoire, aware that the state would come into additional funds from that source by 2009, planned a move to combine them with private monies to develop a biotech sector.  In a  2005 commentary prescient of current threat of extinction for the Basic Health Program (which began as a 1987 pilot project and became permanent in 1993) the Seattle Weekly had reported:

It will be controversial because originally the tobacco settlement money was supposed to be used to help states offset the health care costs associated with smoking. In 2003, when Gary Locke floated an idea similar to the Life Science Discovery Fund—he called it Bio21—Senate Majority Leader Brown told Seattle Weekly she didn’t like the idea of using tobacco money for biotechnology. “We are one of the few states that has remained true to using that money for health care,” she said at the time. Expect the debate over the best use of the tobacco money to continue.

As I had written previously, in late October 2010, after the Governor had issued her call for “across the board budget cuts” from every state agency, the LSDF awarded $5 million to a private company engaged in personalized medicine research.  Last week, LSDF awarded $600,000 in commercialization grants to four research projects.

The Interpreter Services program also was created as a result of federal litigation, in this case as a result of a 1991 Consent Decree negotiated with the Office of Civil Rights in response to lawsuits and civil rights complaints filed against DSHS for failing to provide equal access to services for clients with limited English proficiency  By law, in this case the Civil Rights Act of 1964, title VI, recipients of federal funds must not discriminate against program beneficiaries on the basis of race, color, or national origin.  Courts have defined lack of language access as a form of discrimination based on national origin. However, the responsibility to fund language services is ultimately that of providers. Since  techncially Washington funded the DSHS program voluntarily, it is now able to seek to de-fund it, unlike other mandatory programs. But in doing so, the state would also forgo specific federal funds that it has been receiving that have covered 50-75% of the total costs, as the Washington State Coalition for Language Access explains in a fact sheet:  WASCLA DSHS Interpreter Services Talking Points January 2011

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Conference Time

Posted in Consumer Protection, Economics of Health Care, Ethics, Global Health, Health Care Marketing, Health Disparities, Healthcare Inequalities, Language Access, Language Services on 26 September 2010| 3 Comments »

Many important conferences are scheduled from September  to the end of the year.   Last week I was  fortunate to be able to attend the second annual meeting of the  Consortium of Universities for Global Health at the University of Washington here in Seattle. I’ll report  on that later.

Some other notable conferences, including those in which I am involved in running and/presenting,  are:

International “Selling Sickness” Conference in Amsterdam, October  7-8, sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Health and Health Care Inspectorate,  Gezonde Scepsis, Healthy Skepticism International, and the  World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe.
While I won’t get to be there in person, my poster will be there  and also posted here on the blog .

Summit VI of the Washington State Coalition for Language Access  (WASCLA) will take place in Seattle on October 15-16.  Run entirely by volunteers, including yours truly, I’m on the team organizing the conference and also a presenter for a plenary session on Community Advocacy & Engagement.  And FYI to those interested in attending: early bird registration rates have been extended to October 1.

The  Diversity Rx 7th National Conference on Quality Health Care for Culturally Diverse Populations will be held in Baltimore on October 18-21. Sadly I’ll be missing this top-notch biannual event.

Heading into November, the Washington State Pharmacy Association will hold its annual meeting in Vancouver, WA on the 5th and 6th, where together with  pharmacist and  attorney colleagues from WASCLA, we’ll be speaking on Language Access at the Pharmacy.


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Last minute input to Calif. Board of Pharmacy Needed

Posted in Health Literacy, Language Services on 9 March 2010| Leave a Comment »

Urgent  messages  to the California State Board of Pharmacy asking them  approve regulations upholding the mandates of  SB 472, which was signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2008, are needed by close of business tomorrow,  Wednesday, March 10.

This law spoke to the need for readily-readable  (in minimum 12-point font) Rx labels, and required both translated labels and  use of interpreter services to offer personal  medication information to patients at pharmacies.   Advocacy groups  for senior citizens, consumer protection, health and safety, and immigrants, plus  pharmacy professionals, all supported the proposed  measures. all While the CSBoP ‘s original draft of regulations mandated these improvements, the version approved on Feb. 17 , reversed the changes and would  allow 10-point  font to be used, would not require use of translated labels, and would make pharmacy-level  interpreter services optional.  Reversal of the health-protective provisions of the law is attributed to intense lobbying  (and major gubernatorial campaign contributions)  by  national pharmacy chains and pharmaceutical companies. To make matters worse, the day before the Feb. 17 vote, Gov. Schwarzenegger appointed an executive from a major chain drug company to fill an open position on the CSBoP, and her vote swung the Board’s recommendations, as reported by the LA Times:

Drug executive cast key vote to kill labeling law

Pharmacy board was poised to OK measure opposed by one of the governor’s major donors until he named a CVS/Pharmacy official to the panel……

For more background on the issues, please visit the websites of the California Pan Ethnic Health Network,   Gray Panthers California, Consumer Union’s Safe Patient Project. The CSBoP website contains the text of the law and relevant materials on pending Patient-Centered Prescription Label regulations.

Send  your  by comments March 10 directly to Carolyn Klein, Manager, Legislation and Regulations for the CSBoP at:
carolyn_klein@dca.ca.gov

California residents can send comments  via the online form on Consumer Union’s Safe Patient Project .

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Help for Haiti

Posted in Assistance, Language Services, tagged on 21 January 2010| Leave a Comment »

Here are links for info and specialized resources of note:

Haiti Earthquake Relief page on Snopes.com

Snopes  evaluates urban legends, rumors ,and messages that especially are rife on the Internet. This is a reliable resource to help separate fact from fiction. Unfortunately scam artists see disasters as opportunities.

Several organizations are seeking professional Kreyol and French interpreters and translators as volunteers to work in Haiti and remotely. For details, plus  information on language pairs needed, contact the National Association of Judiciary Interpreters and Translators (working with the American Red Cross) and Translators Without Borders (working  with Doctors Without Borders).  A new networking group, Interpreters and Translators for Haiti has set up a Facebook page for communication.

The Hesperian Foundation, a non-profit publisher of materials for community-based health care, has Haitian Creole editions of the book Where There is No Doctor, Sanitation and Cleanliness booklet ,and Where Women Have No Doctor in PDF form, available to download for free on their website.  A Creole print edition of Where There is No Doctor is available for purchase.

Idealist.org continues to offer solid information, insights, and networking on rational and appropriate ways to help the people of Haiti. See the blog for the latest, including Helping Haiti: Things to Consider.


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