Philadelphia program promotes health services and insurance across cultural barriers

But in Connecticut an initiative designed to extend insurance coverage of face-to-face interpreters for Medicaid patients remains unfunded.

The Philadelphia Inquirer: A Simple Idea Promoting Health Care Catches On In Spanish Community
Promotoras — volunteer "health promoters" … carry messages of health and wellness to their peers, mostly Spanish-speaking Mexicans in South Philadelphia. As the minority group least likely to have a primary-care doctor and with nearly half living beneath the poverty line, Latinos, especially recent immigrants, have challenged doctors for decades. But this simple idea — using people from church or the barrio to encourage preventive care — has produced success noted in medical journals over the last five years. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced in May an initiative to encourage the use of promotoras for outreach and education about health services and insurance (Schatz, 8/17).

CT Watchdog: Health Interpreters Needed In CT But Funding Unavailable
[In] Connecticut medical interpretation is not covered by public or private insurance. In 2007 the state extended coverage for face-to-face professional interpreters for all Medicaid patients and estimated its cost at $4.7 million yearly, half of which would be reimbursed by the federal government. But the program has never been funded in the state budget (Shaddox, 8/16). 

Related, earlier KHN story: Language Barriers Complicate Immigrants' Medical Problems (Barclay, 4/21/2009).