This program was the best thing I could have done for myself--and for my future patients--before starting med school
- Ben Rosenfeld
Mission Statement
Somos Hermanos aims to reduce the disparity in health care access and quality that results when health care providers are unable to effectively communicate with Latino patients due to language and cultural barriers. The Student Immersion Program (SIP) seeks to address the inadequacies of the current efforts to address these problems by increasing the number of bilingual, culturally competent health care professionals.
Program Description
Our students live in Quetzaltenango (Xela), Guatemala for 6 months. Through intensive Spanish courses, lecture series, socially and culturally relevant volunteer projects, and weekly activities, our students gain the language capability and cultural competency desperately needed to serve marginalized, Spanish-speaking Latino populations.
Brief Background of the Problem
Spanish is the primary language for 11% of the US population and 44.5% of Los Angeles County residents. While Latin Americans comprise the largest minority group in the US, they receive disproportionately low access to lower quality health care.1 The National Healthcare Disparities Report states that having “providers who meet the needs of individual patients and with whom patients can develop a relationship based on mutual communication and trust” is an essential component of health care access - a component that is often not addressed for Latinos in the US.2 In fact, language barriers and lack of cultural understanding account for 37% of health care access problems, while the inability to afford health care accounts for only 18% of access problems.
Note: for more background information or articles pertaining to this topic, please contact us at info@somoshermanos.org
1 California. California State Department of Transportation. Census Data: Ethnicity by City. 2000. 18 Feb. 2006
2 National Healthcare Disparities Report. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2005.