Program Teaches Immigrants About US Health Care System
Many immigrants to the US have a hard time understanding the healthcare system. However, due to a new program through Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring, Maryland, health educators provide seminars for immigrants. The goal of the program is to save costly emergency room admissions.
Many non-English speaking immigrant patients must rely on their family and friends to translate physicians’ and pharmacists’ instructions, which can result in missing important medical information. Also, many immigrants wait to see a physician until an illness is unbearable, because that illness is untreatable in their home country.
The Holy Cross Hospital Ethnic Health Promotion Program, which began in 2001, provides seminars on various health topics in the immigrants' languages. These topics have included heart disease, breast cancer and quitting smoking. The seminars also teach immigrants how to navigate the health care system, which is a mystery for many who are used to a centralized health care system.
The
program is looking to use more foreign-trained doctors who cannot practice
medicine in the US, who not only speak the language but also understand the
medical system in the immigrant’s home country.
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