Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Review Article

Bridging Literacy and Language Differences for Better Health Outcomes: Characterizing a Bilingual Health Specialist

¹Department of Kinesiology, University of Texas at San Antonio, USA

²Department of Health, Texas Wesleyan University, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Esther Garza
Associate Professor Bilingual & ESL Education, School of Education
DWH 211, 1201-Wesleyan Street, Fort Worth, Texas 76105, USA
Tel: 817-531-4216
E-mail: evgarza@txwes.edu

Received date: July 28, 2017; Accepted date: July 31, 2017; Published date: Aug 03, 2017

Citation: Vasquez LL, Garza EV (2017) Bridging Literacy and Language Differences for Better Health Outcomes: Characterizing a Bilingual Health Specialist. J Community Med Health Educ 7: 543. doi:10.4172/2161-0711.1000543

Copyright: © 2017 Vasquez LL, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Background: The following research study addresses the current needs of community health workers and employers, future health professionals and patients in response to the increase in populations that are culturally and linguistically diverse.

Methods: Perspectives of each of these stakeholders (n=22) were developed through the use of focus groups in order to develop the pedagogical principles that lead to an innovative approach in the development of a bilingual health specialist.

Results: The findings indicate that language is an important tool that assists patients in understanding how to better manage their health as well as informing health care workers and employers of best practices in health.

Discussion: Language was identified as an important theme along with the need for cultural competency, access to preventative and urgent care, as well as service learning for future health professionals in order to serve patients in more comprehensive ways that lead to better health outcomes.

Keywords