Health Care: Crossing Boundaries/Eliminating Fear (3317)

According to a study by the Commonwealth Fund, one in three Hispanics have problems communicating with their doctor. The aim of this program is to provide quality healthcare information while helping medical professionals to communicate more effectively with Latino families and children by understanding the cultural and economic factors affecting their lives. Among the topics to be discussed are keys to reaching the Latino patient, understanding cultural belief systems, the problem with folk illnesses, how to deal with patients who trust home remedies but will not reveal them to their doctor, and why many Latino children do not receive proper preventive care and immunizations.

Disparities in health care for Latinos will also be address. Images/Imagenes: Health Care: Crossing Boundaries/Eliminating Fear will include interviews with Latin American immigrants who fear taking their children to doctors and hospitals due to a lack of trust, difficulties in communication or because many are undocumented and fear being sent back to their native country. Nowhere is this more evident than the recent tragedy in New Orleans where hundreds of undocumented Hispanic immigrants decided to stay in their homes and ride out Hurricane Katrina rather than risk being discovered in shelters or hospitals.

This program will examine how incidents of fear and misunderstanding can be reduced by providing culturally knowledgeable interpreters, recruiting minorities to work in healthcare settings, and raising awareness of healthcare workers to sensitive healthcare issues in minority populations. To illustrate the importance of this issue, over 1000 international mental health experts from the Caribbean, South America and the United States gathered in Los Angeles, California on September 21, 2005 for workshops and discussions on how best to overcome barriers and serve the Latino community in the United States.

Images/Imagenes covered this conference in an effort to capture the international urgency of finding solutions to disparities in health care. Health experts from Mexico, Puerto Rico and the United States presented their strategies for change, which included a concerted effort to network and educate both healthcare institutions and the community through workshops and seminars, and create more opportunities for Latinos in the medical field. New Jersey is taking a leadership role in this initiative by providing assistance to Hispanic students through The Hispanic Higher Education Scholarship Fund to overcome financial barriers that may keep them from pursuing a graduate school education.