Understanding the Role of Caseworker-Cultural Mediators in Addressing Healthcare Inequities for Patients with Limited-English Proficiency: a Qualitative Study

Background Patients with limited-English proficiency (LEP) face multiple barriers to equitable healthcare. Interventions that go beyond interpretation, such as the use of bicultural-bilingual patient navigators, hold promise for addressing multi-level barriers. However, data about how to operationalize the tasks that are key to such interventions across diverse LEP communities are lacking. Objective Using our health system's bicultural-bilingual caseworker-cultural mediator (CCM) program serving Amharic-, Cambodian/Khmer-, Somali-, Spanish-, and Vietnamese-speaking patients, we sought to understand the key tasks that comprise the CCMs' role and how these tasks enable them to address barriers to healthcare for patients with LEP. Design Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2019 with a purposive sample (n=23) of clinicians, CCMs, and patients with LEP or their family members from all language groups. Participants Patients or family members receiving CCM services, CCMs, and clinicians who referred patients to the program. Approach Content analysis consisting of a hybrid deductive-inductive qualitative approach. Key Results Seven CCM tasks were identified: advocacy, care coordination, navigation, interpretation, education, mediation, and emotional support. Additionally, four key impacts emerged that described the ways in which these tasks enabled the CCMs to facilitate equitable care: bridging the patient, family, community, clinical team, and healthcare system; impacting knowledge of cultural issues and of the healthcare system; troubleshooting cultural barriers and problem solving; and enhancing relationship building. Conclusions We identified several tasks and impacts that enabled CCMs to address multi-level barriers to care experienced by patients with LEP and their families across diverse cultural and linguistic groups. Findings suggest opportunities for the generalizability of programs such as ours for multiple LEP populations. Additionally, interventions having a greater scope than interpretation and including relationships with communities may be more successful in addressing barriers to equitable care at the individual, system, and community levels.

Automated summary

This study aims to understand the role and tasks of bilingual bicultural caseworkers in a cross-language healthcare program, as well as how these tasks help address healthcare barriers faced by limited-English proficiency (LEP) patients. The results identified seven key tasks and four important impacts of the caseworkers, suggesting the potential generalizability of such interventions across diverse cultural and linguistic groups.