Emily – Gillings Around the globe

Discovering the Beauty and Challenges of Language

Posted on August 24, 2023 by cmckay1

Hello again! My name is Emily Benson, and I am a second-year MPH student in the global health concentration. I did my practicum this summer with Refugee Community Partnership (RCP), a non-profit organization in Carrboro, NC. RCP works alongside local refugee and immigrant communities to connect them to the resources and social connections they need to thrive and to mobilize organizations to eliminate barriers to accessing these resources.

I recently completed my practicum with RCP, and I have learned so much! I have been working with them on a research project that aims to identify the main barriers to health care among local refugee and immigrant communities. This practicum experience has not only deepened my passion for healthcare access and the social determinants of health but has also revealed a health barrier to me that is not often discussed in public health – language barriers.

*Ler, another UNC Gillings intern at RCP, and I working in the RCP office.*

The Importance (and Beauty!) of Language

The research project I was working on is a community-led research project that is analyzing language access in medical settings. This research consists of data from RCP’s Language Navigator Program (discussed in my previous blog post!) and community health forums. The research team is currently working to host community forums with six language communities: Arabic, Karen, Burmese, Pashto, Dari, and Spanish.

For my practicum, I have been working on two main tasks: (1) Analyzing the qualitative data from the language navigator program feedback surveys and (2) Working to organize the research data to effectively present the research findings to local healthcare institutions and professionals.

Through these tasks and working with individuals of various language communities, I have learned so much. I have particularly discovered a lot about my personal implicit biases around languages other than English. Working with RCP has opened my mind to the beauty and importance of different languages that are spoken here in the US and around the world. Enabling individuals to communicate in their own language is vitally important, as it has an enormous impact on many aspects of life – most prominently, an individual’s overall health. Specifically, lack of language access in medical settings has potentially detrimental effects including, but not limited to, critical information missed in a health appointment, miscommunication between the patient and provider, misdiagnosis of the patient, and/or incorrect or ineffective treatment.

Because of this internship, I can gratefully say that I will never take for granted language access again and have a new-found appreciation for all languages worldwide. I hope this research project will bring to light the health inequities that exist among refugee and immigrant communities in the US and pave a path to changes in medical institutions to reduce the impact of language barriers.

The Afghan Women’s Sewing Group

Over the course of my internship with RCP, I also had the opportunity to become involved with an Afghan Women’s Sewing Group. Being able to help with this pilot program has been very eye-opening for me. I have been able to meet, interact with, and get to know some amazingly brave and courageous women from Afghanistan and hear some of their stories.

It has been really cool to see them create community and share culture, experiences, and knowledge with each other through this group. Many of these women are incredibly talented when it comes to sewing and embroidery. Through this group, they have all made incredibly beautiful pieces!!

*An embroidery piece made by a member of the sewing group*

One of the biggest challenges that this experience presented to me was that I could not fully communicate directly with many of these women as we do not speak the same language. However, the most prominent thing I learned from this challenge is this:

A smile and acts of kindness are the same in every language.

I fully believe that these two things have the potential to be the bridge between all cultures and people around the world and can be the beginning of dismantling these language barriers. I have absolutely loved being able to connect with these women and experience a little bit of their beautiful culture and am grateful for all of the things I have learned along the way. I am very excited to see where this group goes in the future!

I want to end this blog with a quote that has changed my whole perspective on the importance and beauty of languages, and I hope it inspires each of you reading this blog as well.

“We dream in language, we sing in language, we think in language. It is tied to our lands, to our bodies, to our relationships, and to our knowledge. It is important that we feel respected as speakers—not just for what we have to say, but also how we say it.” – Antena Aire

Thanks for reading and following along as I completed my practicum!

– Emily

The Fight for Healthcare Access for All: Disrupting Language Barriers

Posted on June 12, 2023June 8, 2023 by

Hello! My name is Emily, and I am an incoming second-year MPH student at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health in the global health concentration. This summer, I am doing my practicum with a non-profit organization in Carrboro, NC called Refugee Community Partnership (RCP). RCP works with local refugee and migrant communities to connect people to the resources and social connections they need and eliminate barriers to access to these resources. I have learned a lot so far and am very excited to see what this summer will hold! There is one main idea that has been prominent in my mind since beginning my practicum: The power of community.

The Power of Community

The main idea that is present in every task, project, and program in this organization is community. RCP does a phenomenal job working directly with the community and ensuring that they are working to address the community’s goals. They achieve this in many ways, but one of the most prominent ways is through one of their main community-led programs called Language Navigators. Through this program, RCP members are able to request a “language navigator” to go with them to medical appointments. These language navigators are community members who go with an RCP member to help navigate the medical appointment environment from the parking lot to check-in. During the appointment with the provider, medical offices that receive federal funding (such as hospitals and clinics that receive Medicare or Medicaid payments) are federally required to provide a medical interpreter. However, often, they do not. The language navigator is there to help the patient advocate for a medical interpreter and ensure the patient understands all of the doctor’s instructions. At the end of the appointment, the language navigator is there to help with coordinating lab work, scheduling follow-up appointments, and coordinating referrals.

RCP’s direct partnership with the community in this program is beyond inspiring to me. I have learned a lot about the importance of community partnership just by watching this program take place. Their language navigator program is truly making a huge change, one medical appointment and one person at a time!

The Community-Led Research Project

During my practicum, I have been mainly working with the RCP research team on a community-led research project. The main goal of the research project is to determine the full scale of language inaccess in medical settings and the main barriers to access to healthcare among refugee and immigrant communities. The primary focus is on how language inaccess among these communities affects their ability to access quality health care.

This research project primarily aims to assess language access for six languages: Arabic, Karen, Burmese, Pashto, Dari, and Spanish. Our team is working to collect and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data to determine the availability, quality, and type of interpretation provided at medical appointments through surveys, community forums, and in-depth interviews.

Egg rolls that one of the RCP members made

Several weeks ago, the research team held a community forum for women in the Arabic-speaking community to discuss access to healthcare and language inaccess among this community. The other MPH intern and I created visual images of the main themes from this forum for the team to bring back to the women in the Arabic-speaking community to ensure that the themes the research team observed are the main problems and concerns they are actually facing. (Again, RCP does such an amazing job partnering with the community!) Along with this, I have also been helping with the coding and analysis of the qualitative data for the research project. It has been extremely exciting and fulfilling to be able to put some of the things I’ve learned in my MPH classes into practice these past two weeks, and I am excited to continue working on this research project for the rest of the summer!

Working with RCP on this research project has been a very eye-opening experience for me. It has allowed me to see the depth and impacts of language inaccess among refugee and migrant communities in healthcare settings. While I have only been working with RCP for about two weeks, I feel as if I have experienced a whole new world within the community of Chapel Hill.

I’m extremely thankful to be able to intern at such an amazing organization with incredible people! I’m very excited to see how I will grow this summer and further discover the power of communities in creating change in the medical system. I cannot wait to see what the rest of my time at RCP will hold!

– Emily

Highlights from the Highlands in Guatemala

Posted on July 15, 2019 by nayavill

It’s hard to believe another month has gone by and that I am wrapping up my practicum very soon! During the second half of my time with Curamericas in Calhuitz, Guatemala, I continued collecting and analyzing data on neonatal outcomes, modifying my interview guide, and then conducting and analyzing these group interviews with the nursing staff to collect their perspectives on managing and improving neonatal outcomes.

I am lucky to have shared most of my time in Calhuitz with another Gillings practicum student, Kay, and for both of our projects we needed to visit the neighboring Casas Maternas of Santo Domingo and Tuzlaj. This was a great opportunity to learn first-hand about the different catchment areas covered by the organizations’ projects, meet more staff, and switch up the scenery.

We were told the Casa Materna in Tuzlaj had a different feel, that the area was more remote and unaccustomed to seeing foreign volunteers, and that it would be close quarters due to the Casa’s small size. After a jostling two hours up and down rocky mountain roads, it’s true we found a cozy atmosphere, but with welcoming vibes. We walked into what felt like a data-organizing party serenaded by Romeo Santos and reggaeton. There was hot chocolate for breakfast and Philly cream cheese. Dogs sprawled lazily on the grass rather than lurking fearfully for scraps. A 13-year old was admitted to the Casa, and rather than experiencing a prolonged and difficult labor, delivered a healthy baby within a couple of hours. Tuzlaj was full of surprises.

One of the main objectives for visiting Tuzlaj, and one of the most engaging parts of my practicum, was to conduct these group interviews with staff about their perspectives on neonatal complications and deaths. I continue to admire these nurses and mujeres de apoyo for their hard work with limited resources. These conversations convey a strong initiative and sense of responsibility to prepare and educate oneself due to their isolation and limited access to cell signal. They share a holistic view of health and social determinants that’s at the heart of nursing, but which we hospital-based nurses can lose during hectic days. As with many public health issues, it was clear these neonatal and maternal health challenges we were discussing had deep roots in longstanding gender and socioeconomic inequities, discrimination, and language barriers. The staff knew the solutions still lie in preventive measures such as continuing to strengthen their health education outreach, community engagement, and garnering more support from civic and government partners.

View of Calhuitz and the Casa (tall green building) at dusk.

At the end of my time in Calhuitz, we were pleased to step fully back into tourists’ shoes for a couple days and visit Lake Atitlán on my way back to fly out of Guatemala City. It’s one of those places that pictures don’t do justice and distance perception must be altered due to the enormity of the volcanoes and the beauty of the water. We walked to a popular lookout and cliff-jumping site and after Kay confidently took a birthday jump, I of course had to follow. Only afterwards we learned that it was almost 40 feet—twice what it had looked to me.

Numbers that balance at Lake Atitlán, unlike in spreadsheets.

Back in NC I am continuing to work with both the quantitative and qualitative data in order to report back findings to staff and discuss next steps. It is interesting to see how the data complement each other and also the amount of information available from a data set that was a bit confusing to piece together. It’s been very meaningful having a practicum that places a foot both in global health and nursing, and hopefully this research work will offer the organization some insight into their outcomes and assist in determining next steps for reducing neonatal mortality.

– Emily