"¡Tu Salud!" translates from Spanish to English as "Your Health!" is part of Hablamos Juntos; intended to help improve access to quality health care for Latinos with limited English proficiency in central western Washington.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Grant 55804 Tu Salud Extension: December 2005 - December 2006

Based on our work to improve language access for Latinos in Southwest Washington, CHOICE was selected to receive an additional year of funding from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The funding was given to pursue state policy work related to Quality Assurance in health care interpreting. To date, we have produced the following set of papers, which will culminate in recommendations to be released in December 2006 to various stakeholders.

• Quality Assurance Recommendations for Health Care Interpreting in Washington State (December 2006)
• Quality Assurance Options for Health Care Interpreting in Washington State (October 2006)
• Quality Assurance Approaches for Health Care Interpreting: Nationwide and Washington State (August 2006)

CHOICE Regional Health Network, a non-profit consortium is seeking to develop affordable models to help Spanish-speaking patients communicate more effectively with their English-speaking health care providers. Effective communication between health professionals and those they serve is essential for health maintenance as well as disease control and treatment.

Health care providers and Spanish speaking patients interact with a health care system that they describe as mediocre at best. Faced with a language barrier that impacts the outcomes of health care delivery, providers see the issue of accommodating Spanish speakers within the health care system as a very important priority. Similarly, a large majority of Spanish speaking patients agree that the care they received is compromised when providers neither speak Spanish nor offer translators. There is a consensus on both sides of the communication exchange that the health of this community is put at risk due to these language barriers and current approaches to surmounting them.[1]

The mission of the ¡Tu Salud! Project is to improve communication between health care providers and their patients with limited English proficiency.

The ¡Tu Salud! Project covers five counties of Washington: Grays Harbor, Lewis, Mason, N. Pacific and Thurston.

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[1] Study of the Cascades East Area Health Education Center for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. http://www.cascadeseast.org/pdf/wirthlin-study.pdf

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