My experience in Somos Hermanos was excellent. There is no substitute for living in a Spanish-speaking country and participating in clinic work, teaching, and taking personal one on one Spanish lessons.

- Dr. Claudia Rojas, Nova Southeastern University, Spring 2007 participant

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. Through its language and cultural immersion programs, Somos Hermanos seeks to increase the number of bilingual, culturally competent health care professionals in the US. 

Program Description

The Somos Hermanos Student Immersion Program (SIP) is a cultural and language immersion program designed for future US health care professionals.  Each year, Somos Hermanos runs two six-month Student Immersion Programs (one in the fall and one in the spring) and a six-week summer Student Immersion Program, all based in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Our programs combine intensive Spanish instruction, a comprehensive lecture series, socially and culturally relevant volunteer projects, and weekly activities to ensure our participants gain the language capability and cultural competency desperately needed to serve marginalized, Spanish-speaking Latino populations. In addition, the six-month sessions include a trip to El Salvador and Oaxaca, Mexico.

The six-month Somos Hermanos Student Immersion Program targets U.S. students pursuing health care professions including medicine, nursing, dentistry, psychology, physical therapy, health promotion, and other health-related fields.  The program is designed for students who have completed their undergraduate studies and are taking a year off of school (e.g. deferring acceptance or applying to schools) before they begin medical school or health-related graduate programs.  Somos Hermanos targets this group because comprehensive language acquisition is a time consuming process, necessitating more than just a few weeks of exposure. Because most medical and health care graduate students begin interacting with patients during their first year of study, students are able to both utilize and build upon their language skills and cultural competency throughout their course of study.

The Somos Hermanos Student Immersion six-week summer session program is for medical students who have completed their first year of study in medical school or another health-care graduate program and already have some Spanish language experience. This six week program is designed for students who are looking to improve their skills in Spanish while also putting into practice some of the skills learned during their first year of medical school.  Students in the summer program take part in weekly lectures, activities, and clinically related volunteer projects.

For more details about the SIPs, please refer to the individual pages on language instruction, volunteer projects, lectures, activities, and El Salvador and Mexico for more detailed information about each of these components of the Student Immersion Programs. 

The six month sessions run from January to June (Spring session) and from July to December (Fall session).  The six-week summer program is held in June/July.  Applications for the six-month sessions are generally due in October, and applications for the summer session are due in February.  More information is available on the ‘Application Process’ page under the ‘How to Apply’ tab.

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.¹The 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.  The goal of the Somos Hermanos Student Immersion Program is to reduce these barriers to quality health care by increasing the number of bilingual and culturally competent health care providers in the U.S. 

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.