1.5 Equal Access Language Services

(upbeat music) - Welcome to Public Health did that. A program of Public Health partners with your host, Rebecca Druette Card. - Hello everyone and welcome to Public Health did that. Today we're gonna talk about an important public health issue, language access with Carol Volandia, the founder and CEO of Equal Access Language Services. Carol, thank you so much for being here. - Thank you, Rebecca, it is my pleasure to be here and talk about language access. - Great, and we are gonna get right into that in just a moment. (upbeat music) - Equity, integrity, respect, excellence, partnership. We are Public Health partners, our consultants provide strategic solutions to your public health problems. Visit www.publichealthpartners.net to learn more about us and what we can be for you. - All right, welcome back to my discussion with Carol Volandia of Equal Access Language Services. Carol, I have had the pleasure of working with your team in the past and I suspect we may have some listeners though who are unfamiliar with Equal Access Language Services. Would you mind telling us a little bit about your organization? - Absolutely, and first I would like to say that it's been a pleasure working with you for, I think it's been over four years, almost since we began at Equal Access Language Services, which is a minority women-owned enterprise. I founded it in 2017 to eliminate language-based discrimination. I work as an interpreter as well. I did so for many years at one of the largest hospitals in Maryland, it's not the largest hospital in Maryland, and realized that there was a big gap in terms of accessibility for people with limited English proficiency and started to research about the problem and discover that we have about 26 million people in the US that don't speak English. And so I decided to create my company with the purpose of eliminating language-based discrimination. So we help organizations make their services accessible to people with limited English proficiency and those who are deaf and hard of hearing. Because we truly believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion can only be reached specifically the part of inclusion, if we actually include the population that don't speak English. So our goal is simple, we may language access the cornerstone of inclusion. Wonderful. So tell me a little bit more about how you decided that you specifically needed to do something to address this. What was that thought process like? - Yes, so there was a moment actually when I was working as an interpreter. And let me tell the audience that I am an immigrant as well for a very long time was a limited English proficient person myself. I've had lots of experiences with the language barrier. But there was a point when I was working as an interpreter, I met this patient who came from Central America. And he had a really traumatic story, if you will, coming to the United States, then being deported back to his country, but having to flee again, because he was threatened by the gangs of his country and all that and came back to the U.S. And obviously he only had his body as his main asset. Then he gets sick, goes to the hospital, they hadn't scheduled an interpreter at that moment and then I finally met him. So when I met him, he tells me all of this, right, all of the hurdles he went through and he expresses gratitude because I was there. And then if we go into the appointment and the doctor tells him basically bad news about his health. So it made me think of how important our health is. It's basically our most important asset. He's really the main thing we have, right? And I don't think anybody will trade a card or a house or a piece of land for their health. So it made me realize how important it is and how at that particular moment, that patient was even worse off a health wise because of the language barrier. And his appointment was postponed, I think, a couple of months because they had not scheduled an interpreter. So I thought, oh my god, this is really bad. And because of the hospital, I worked the reputation, the mission and vision. I decided to try to solve that problem and bring about what underscored the importance of language access. Wow, so it's really admirable to tackle such a big issue as one person to start with, right? I just want to say there are many people and that work on language access and now and there are advocates. But at that point, I felt that it was a very important issue to tackle because it was somewhat invisible, at least in the proximity of where I worked. That makes a lot of sense because even from the outside, many settings have access to interpreters, not every setting, not every healthcare setting and certainly not in every community. But to even hear that, yeah, even when we have them, our patients still may have to wait a couple of months before they can get their care specifically because there isn't availability of one of those translators. Talk to me a little bit about the strategies that you're using and how you're partnering with healthcare and public health settings specifically. Certainly, part of our services is exactly translation, document translation and interpretation services for both spoken languages and American sign language. That's strategy number one, using professional interpreters and professional translators. And I emphasize this because often people will think that being bilingual is sufficient to be an interpreter. So a lot of people disregard the professional aspect of the work and that's why I emphasize it. So that's strategy number one. But more importantly, I am trying to really shift the culture around language barriers and helping people understand that language barriers just like any physical barrier impede people from accessing services, right? And that we need to conceive language barriers just as physical barriers. So another strategy I'm using is I develop this course that is called effective inclusion through language access. And is a course that's addressed to professional in healthcare. So I'm partnering with organizations and hospitals, doctors, nurses, social workers so that they learn the content and the first about our linguistic diversity in the United States, which I think is very important, especially at the time when our government is telling us that there is an official language and then when you go back in history, it turns out we have been multilingual. Ever since we were a nation, I am trying to provide this perspective to these professionals as well as educating them on the impact of language barriers in healthcare specifically. So when you have healthcare accounting for one-fifth of our economy and realizing that of that expense, about 49% is, it goes into wasteful spending. Part of that is due to miscommunication and systemic kinds of gaps. These types of errors are driven by 5% of the population that is usually the uninsured and very likely also the limited English proficient population. So helping them see how language barriers have such an impact in healthcare, then my hope is that people start looking at these differently and start planning for language accessibility as opposed to have that as an afterthought, which usually happens is that they will first hire anybody if they hire a role or use substandard interpretation services or substandard translation services, depending on the organization asking bilingual people to do the job and not require any professional standard. Or asking people to volunteer, right? And I don't have anything against volunteerism, I think it's great, but I don't think it should be a substitute for language access plans. So that's what I am willing come set out to accomplish with my course, and it gives the opportunity to professionals to earn up to 10 continued education units. So please sign up if you want to stay. So someone wanted to sign up for it, how would they do that? At the moment they will have to contact me, so I will tell them what's involved and how to access the platform, it's almost ready. And I will explain the benefits of the course to them, including the fact that it's compliant with the Affordable Care Act, Section 1557, that demands that your healthcare facility trains people on language accessibility. And it really is, so that's how people can get in touch, they can contact me, and I guess we will provide my email at the end of this. And yeah, I would be happy to talk with them. - Great, now what changes have you seen in language, access and healthcare in public health settings since you started this work? - Well, good on bad changes. I really noticed that in the past few years, there was more awareness, for sure, about language accessibility. And I think you and I talked a little bit about this in the work that we have shared. So I saw with the light that people were noticing the impact on language barriers on the populations that are limited English proficient. And that I think is great because the conception of this issue has an intersectional issue that goes beyond just speaking another language, right? Because in the many layers that we humans have, language is always described, but language accessibility is not mentioned. We limit ourselves to say, yeah, language is also like the component of human beings. But rarely discuss what happens when that person enters a new culture and then there are these barriers. So I've noticed more awareness. And that's in the positive side. In the negative side, I have to say that after the executive order, one for two to four, that was issued in March 1st of 2025, I also have observed some negative attitudes about people not speaking English or having an accent. But I am not gonna say in the public health space necessarily. But for example, I hear anecdotic accounts of people that go to the doctor and the doctor or not necessarily the doctor, but the receptionist might not like your accent or make a face or wonder why they didn't speak English or why did you learn English in the 26 years you have lived here. So that is still happening or is it still happening or is happening more frequently? So it hasn't helped. That executive order has not helped. They add to worse language accessibility. - Yeah, it definitely seems like an especially hard time to have limited English proficiency in the US. Have you found that you've had to shift how you approached this work? - Yes, in fact, one of the things that happened after executive order 1, 4, 2, 4, that is very positive is that it got people talking about language access because everybody was like, "Wait, how come we didn't have an official language?" That's a common question. Like many people don't even know. In the language services industry, people are more like, "Oh, wait, what is language access about how can I become interested in this?" So definitely it has this part discussion about it. And the way I'm approaching it is, again, helping people understand that language barriers are the same as physical barriers. There is no difference. And just when we compare, for example, the efforts done by mental health professionals trying to help people understand that mental health and health are not two different things. And that is the approach I'm taking right now. So think about language access as if it was a ramp, right? To access a building. And then somebody tells you, we're gonna issue this executive order that says, "Everyone, we have an official language "and you have to make efforts to speak English "and not use language access unless it's necessary, "or discourage language access if it's not necessary." So it's equivalent as if I were to tell you, okay, now in this building, we're gonna use stairs and go around the building and try to find every, unnecessary ramp and put a set of staircase instead of the ramp. That's not making any sense, right? So the comparison, I think it helps people understand that the stairs are not bad. It's not bad to say English is widely spoken in the US, is perhaps the language the majority of people speak, it's not bad, right? It's like the stairs are not intrinsically bad, but ramps are necessary to access, right? So we still have to have language access for people that need it. So I think taking away whether it's good or bad is very important. So that has been also my approach. It's not like I am not saying anything different than we need ramps. We need ramps to access the building. Still, even if you like stairs, we still need ramps for people that can use the stairs. - Absolutely, Carol. What is your favorite thing about this work that you're doing? - Well, I have many favorite things, but the sense of creating community and the fact that people question long-held beliefs and having people think and analyze themselves about the ways they conceive life is amazing to me. So I often invite them to think about a moment when they have been outside of the US in a country where they don't speak the language and nobody speaks their language. And if they have been, especially if they have been sick or in some sort of trouble, how did that feel? And so when I do my workshops and I talk to people about this, I notice that they shift their thinking a little bit and they are able to put themselves in the shoes of another human being. So the idea that you are promoting compassion through this work is one of my favorite things because perhaps language is one of the easiest tools to use for people to really relate because we travel, those who are fortunate to have been abroad and face the language barriers, which I think is also a privilege to be able to go somewhere and always on them. They speak another language. I think one of its great. So I counted as one of my favorite things, the fact that it's a very good tool to help people put themselves in the shoes of another human being. How can listeners support equal access language services? - Thank you for asking that question. First, of course, the work I'm doing with effective inclusion through language access is a project that's dear to my heart and that it will really help change our culture to be more receptive about language barriers and what they mean. So definitely I encourage healthcare professionals to inquire about the course. And obviously at this stage, I'm selling it to organizations, not to individuals, it's a great source of training because you have to then see use that you can take from it and the introductory price of the course, I'm not gonna discuss here, but it's ridiculously low. The main idea of doing it this way is that you understand the value after taking the course, right? Like you, I don't want to create a barrier for you to take the course, that's price, right? I just want you to take the course. So it's really unreasonably low. So that's the best way to support. And honestly, to support the greater work is use professionals to do this job, professional interpreters, professional translators. Even if they don't contact my company, use professionals, make sure that whoever you're using for language services, they are recruiting professional interpreters and translators. - That's great, well, all right everyone, check out equalaccesslanguageservices.com to learn more. Carol, it really was a pleasure. Thank you so much for being here. - Thank you Rebecca for inviting me. - Let's do it again sometime. - Oh my god, yes, I would love to. Hopefully things change for the better and continue to change for the better. - Agreed, agreed. All right, here are this week's shout outs. The new Alucavin from Pop Health and Gas Lit wants to shout out the Public Health for Community Power Coalition, a growing network of non-governmental public health organizations working together to strengthen their role within movements for racial, environmental, economic, and social justice by supporting grassroots organizing groups also known as Community Power Building Organizations. An Ariel Ritchie at the permanent commission for the status of racial, indigenous, and tribal populations in Maine would like to shout out cross-cultural community services in Portland, Maine. They are leading the way in the state with community-led needs assessments, including conversations about community-led design, collection, and ownership of data, which is pretty exciting stuff. Do you want to shout out some good work? Visit publichealthpartners.net/publichealthdidthat to submit your nomination. - Public Health did that is a podcast from Public Health Partners, produced by Rebecca Druette Card and Dominique Wilkins. If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe to it wherever you listen. We'd appreciate it if you also let us a review. It helps other people find us. If you have comments, ideas for future topics, or want to share one of your own success stories, please contact us via our website, publichealthpartners.net/publichealthdidthat.