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Bilingualism in the World of Health and Illness

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Abstract

The movement of peoples across linguistic boundaries means the existence of individuals who speak, to a greater or lesser extent, more than one language. How such individuals have in the past and can in the present serve as mediators within the health care system is described and the need for closer attention to such resources stressed.

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Notes

  1. “Over on The East Side,” The New York Times (27 August 1895): 13.

  2. Report of the Managers of the Jews’ Hospital, Mile End (London: J. Tyler and Co., 1816).

  3. G. Black, Lord Rothschild and the Barber: The Struggle to Establish the London Jewish Hospital (London: Tymsder, 2000), p. 31.

  4. C. A. Reeves, Insanity and Nervous Diseases amongst Jewish Immigrants to the East End of London, 1880–1920, (Diss., University of London, 2001), p. 31.

  5. R. Lester, “Thy Needy Brother”: Jewish Welfare in Manchester, c. 1884–1904: The Jewish Ladies’ visiting Association and the Manchester Jewish Hospital (London: The Author, 2005), p. 42.

  6. Ibid, p. 43 quoting the Jewish Chronicle, 14 September 1900.

  7. See the general discussion in K. Waddington, Charity and the London Hospitals, 1850–1898 (London: The Royal Historical Society, 2000), which does not discuss any of the Jewish medical structures.

  8. J. H. Stallard, London Pauperism amongst Jews and Christians (London: Saunders, Otley, and Co., 1867), p. 5.

  9. Ibid, p. 21.

  10. Ibid.

  11. Ibid, p. 63.

  12. Black, p. 3.

  13. Ibid, p. 11.

  14. Lester, p. 26.

  15. D. Porter, “’Enemies of the Race’: Biologism, Environmentalism and Public Health in Edwardian Britain,” Victorian Studies 34 (1991): 159–174.

  16. A. Kalet, F. Gany and L. Senter, “Working with Interpreters: An Interactive Web-based Learning Module,” Academic Medicine 77, No. 9 (2002): 927.

  17. N. Bernstein, “Being a Patient: Recourse Grows Slim for Immigrants Who Fall Ill,” The New York Times (March 3, 2006).

  18. A. Pavlenko, Emotions and Multilingualism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  19. B. J. Sadock and V. A. Sadock, eds., Kaplan & Sadock’s Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, 7th ed. (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1998): 25.3.

  20. M. Robinson and P. Phillips, “An Investigation into the Perceptions of Primary Care Practitioners of the Education and Development Needs for Communicating with Patients who May Not be Fluent in English,” Nursing Education Today 23, No. 4 (2003): 286–98.

  21. B. R. Chiswick, Y. L. Lee, and P. W. Miller, “Immigrants’ Language Skills: The Australian Experience In a Longitudinal Survey,” International Migration Review 38 (2004): 611–54 as well as B. R. Chiswick and P. W. Miller, “Linguistic Distance: A Quantitative Measure of the Distance Between English and Other Languages,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 26 (2005): 1–11.

  22. See the 1995 survey, “Report on Research Project-Access Through Medical Interpreter and Language Services,” conducted by the New York Taskforce on Immigrant Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/atmil.htm.

  23. A. D. Monroe and T. Shirazian, “Challenging Linguistic Barriers to Health Care: Students as Medical Interpreters,” Academic Medicine 79, No. 2 (2004): 118–22.

  24. J. Drouin and C. Rivet, “Training Medical Students to Communicate with a Linguistic Minority Group,” Academic Medicine 78, No. 6 (2003): 599–604.

  25. G. Drennan and L. Swartz, “The Paradoxical Use of Interpreting in Psychiatry,” Social Science and Medicine 54 (12) 2002: 1853–66.

  26. A. Fadiman The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998).

  27. L. S. Morales, M. Lara, R. S. Kington, R.O. Valdez, J.J. Escarce, “Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Behavioral Factors affecting Hispanic Health Outcomes,” Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved 13, No. 4 (2002): 477–503.

  28. M. Wenz, B. R. Chiswick and J. Tauras, “Smoking Among Immigrants in the United States,” unpublished paper in progress, Department of Economics, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2004.

  29. J. A. Epstein, G. J. Botvin and T. Diaz, “Linguistic Acculturation and Gender Effects on Smoking among Hispanic Youth,” Preventive Medicine 27, No. 4 (1998): 583–9.

  30. J. Sundquist and M. Winkelby, “Country of Birth, Acculturation Status and Abdominal Obesity in a National Sample of Mexican-American Women and Men,” International Journal of Epidemiology 29, No. 3 (2000): 470–7.

  31. E. Corkery, C. Palmer, M. E. Foley, C. B. Schechter, et al, “Effect of a Bicultural Community Health Worker on Completion of Diabetes Education in a Hispanic Population,” Diabetes Care 20, No. 3 (1997): 254–7.

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  • “Over on The East Side.” New York Times. 27 August 1895: 13.

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    Google Scholar 

  • Porter, D. “‘Enemies of the Race’: Biologism, Environmentalism and Public Health in Edwardian Britain.” Victorian Studies 34 1991: 159–174.

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  • United States Department of Health and Human Services. “Report on Research Project-Access Through Medical Interpreter and Language Services.” New York Taskforce on Immigrant Health, New York University School of Medicine (1995). http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/atmil.htm.

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  • Wenz, M, BR Chiswick, and J Tauras. “Smoking Among Immigrants in the United States.” Unpublished Paper in Progress. Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 2004.

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  1. Emory College, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Sander L. Gilman

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  1. Sander L. Gilman
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Correspondence to Sander L. Gilman.

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Gilman, S.L. Bilingualism in the World of Health and Illness. J Med Humanit 29, 137–146 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-008-9058-0

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