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Symposium Looks at the ‘Bigger Picture’
in Health Care of Hispanics
Language barriers and cultural differences contribute to a “health illiteracy” among Hispanics that often lessens the quality of their health care, experts said during the Feb. 16 “Health Disparities on the United States/Mexico Border” symposium on the campus of The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP).
Sponsored by the Hispanic Health Disparities Research Center, a collaboration between the UT School of Public Health at Houston and UTEP, the symposium brought together researchers to discuss the future of their investigations into Hispanic health topics.
Keynote speaker was Susan Scrimshaw, Ph.D., dean of the School of Public Health and professor of community health sciences and anthropology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Scrimshaw identi- fied breakdowns in communication as a major factor in uneven levels of health care between Hispanics and other ethnic and racial groups.
“With this brand of ‘health illiteracy,’ we found the majority of patients had some sort of miscommunication with health care providers,” Scrimshaw said. “For example, the word ‘once’ in English is written the same as the word meaning ‘eleven’ in Spanish.”
Scrimshaw, who grew up in Guatemala and is bilingual, suggested implementing better-trained interpreters to reduce miscommunication.
“In our study, there was an average of 31 errors per medical visit,” she said. “The errors included dose and duration of prescribed drugs and missed information on patient allergies. Many of these may be traced to untrained interpreters.”
In addition to language barriers, Scrimshaw identified differences in culture as a necessary area to study in order to understand a community and its medical identity.
“Health behavior is the fabric of a culture,” she said. “It’s important to understand the difference between language and culture and to address both.”
Introduced by UTEP President Diana S. Natalicio, Ph.D., Scrimshaw interacted with attendees in an open forum moderated by Guy S. Parcel, Ph.D., executive dean of the UT School of Public Health and the John P. McGovern, M.D., Professor in Health Promotion.
P. McGovern, M.D., Professor in Health Promotion. In his presentation on the direction of future research opportunities for Hispanic health disparities, Melchor Ortiz, Ph.D., professor of biometry in the School of Public Health, urged seeing the Hispanic population as a number of individual sub-groups as a crucial place to start when trying to identify differences among races.
“All too often, a study will show some sort of difference between white, Hispanic and African-American groups without realizing there are subgroups within the classifications,” Ortiz said. “Helpful interpretations of these studies are not easily reached without digging deeper into subcategories. A better definition of who you are studying will make the research all the more valuable.”
Among other presenters was Theresa Byrd, Dr.P.H., assistant professor of behavioral sciences at the School of Public Health.
“The goal of this symposium was to not only talk about these disparities, but to look at and understand the bigger picture about border health in our region, and what we can do to promote a healthier population,” said Jack Bristol, Ph.D., interim assistant dean of the School of Public Health’s El Paso Regional Campus.
The Hispanic Health Disparities Research Center is funded by a $4.1 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities.
About 75 students have graduated in El Paso from the UT School of Public Health since it established its regional campus in 1992 in response to the shortage of trained public health professionals and the need for an accredited facility in the region. About 60 students are enrolled currently.