International Task Force



TASK FORCE MEETING REPORTS

May 1, 2010

Washington D.C.

Report Compiled by Linda Joyce, Izabel Arocha and Ann-Marie Moreno

About the National Interpreter Advocacy Forum

The National Interpreter Advocacy Forum was formed on May 1, 2007 and has become a national movement for language access advocates nationwide. It is a coalition of organizations and individuals that engage in effective advocacy for equitable treatment of language minority individuals. It promotes language rights, access to credentialed interpreters and translators, and the reimbursement of language services in health care. It provides a forum for language access advocates to organize in task forces and affect change in policies and laws related to language rights. Annual meetings occur on May 1 of each year in a different city in the US. To join, simply email May1NationalForum@

What is a Task Force?

A temporary/semi-permanent unit established to work on a single defined task or activity.

What is our mission?

To establish a multi level approach to educate and advocate for the recognition of certified medical interpreters, nationally and internationally, to ensure they are recognized by all stakeholders. Each stakeholder task force does outreach to their respective stakeholder group (i.e. Health Provider Task Force does outreach specifically to Health Provider Organizations) All task forces promote a coordinated message (adapted to your target audience). Task Forces network among each other to avoid duplication of work and coordinate efforts for maximum effectiveness..

How do I join?

There are no pre-requisites and there are many ways to join. Submit an email of intent stating:

• Stakeholder group you represent (academia, employers, etc.)

• Task Force you would like to join

• Different ways you think you can contribute

If you want to join as an organization, include:

• Mission of your organization

• Name of two representatives from your organization and their emails

• Different ways you think your organization can contribute

• Logo of organization to be included as a supporter on website and materials

Send the e-mail to: InterpreterTaskForces@ (Subject on the e-mail: National Task Force)

What will be expected?

Attend periodic conference call meetings, actively participate in discussions on National Task Force group emails, establish collaborative relationships with your stakeholder organizations and have a representative attend Annual May 1 Forums to present on progress.

What are the benefits?

• Opportunity to forge our profession

• The opportunity to make a difference!

• Be apprised of the latest news on national advocacy

• Recognition with peers in the industry at different events

International Task Force

Chair:

Minhua Liu

Participants:

Claudia Mercer, Kazumi Takesako, Lilian Chaves Saenz, Maria Garvey, Minhua Liu, Sam S. Campisi

Countries represented:

Taiwan, Japan, Colombia, Spain and Australia

Purpose:

To foster awareness of medical interpreter certification around the world

Tasks:

• Identify other trade associations around the world through the internet and make contact by email – use standard questions and text in order to build bridges and share consistent information

• Assign parts of the world to members of the task force or others (IMIA Country Reps) that can help us reach out (South America, Asia, Africa, Europe)

• Make use of international forums (Critical Link, IMIA and other events) to make contacts - there will be a presentation on national certification at Critical Link 2010, we can network there and gather information

• Consolidate information and activities and report to the National Interpreter Forum as it becomes available.

Healthcare Organization Task Force

Chair:

TBA

Participants:

Cesar Pena, Eduardo Jurado, Katrina Badger, Maria Gloria Sutton, Monica Silva, Nilsa Benavides, Oscar Comulada, Stela Moreno

Key stakeholders:

CEO’s, administrators, hospital associations, Office for Public Health and other key health care organizations in the state (Note: Government task force already reaching out to all the Departments of Public Health)

Goals:

• By July 1, come up with a list from our states with key targets and contact names, phone numbers and e-mails, will reach out to state reps in IMIA that aren’t in the group to help compile the lists.

• During that two month time period, work on drafting a short letter that says who we are, what is happening, that there is certification for medical interpreters and would they like to learn more? Have contact info of the board of IMIA included in our letter.

• Focus on states that are in need of better language access. (Note: For information on certification they should go to the National Board, for information on the profession they should go to the IMIA)

• In July will use that list to make their initial contacts. We will develop talking points and will have a session where there is a group practice in how to most effectively make these points.

• Form groups with local interpreter organizations to promote awareness - they can also help raise awareness about certification to the hospitals they interpret for.

• Conference calls every two months and will take notes at those meetings and send updates to the National Forum. The first post May 1 meeting will be the last week of June.

• Some states, depending on their states reps, are thinking of organizing a statewide event to let hospital administrators know what’s happening, i.e. in Louisiana they have an OCR event coming up for hospital administrators.

Academia / Education Task Force

Chair:

TBA

Participants:

Randa Yazbek, Tina Pena, Maria Vimson

Stakeholders:

For profit and non profit organizations that educate interpreters, colleges, universities, hospitals that are host institutions for interns

Goals:

• Data collection - go to state regions, Secretary of State, Chamber of Commerce to get a listing of organizations not in the IMIA Education Registry that provide medical interpreter courses. Get local directories such as NY Circle of Translators, and medical interpreter organizations such as AMINY, MICATA, ATA website and NAJIT.

• Distribute information on certification and have a profile on Facebook, twitter and Linked In

• Send reports to National Forum

• Frequency of meetings, monthly meetings that will be made via teleconference, video conference and e-mail communications

• Date of first meeting post May 1– 6/1/2010

Government Task Force

Chair:

Suzy duMont

Participants:

Ana Odipo, Carmen Rosa Maelipuchi, Desmond O’Rourke, Gabriela Chauvin, Habib Serrano, Janet Bonet, Rosemary Rodriguez

Goals:

• Work with IMIA state representatives, state legislators making them more aware of reimbursement and language access.

• Outreach via letter campaign to state health departments, letting them know about policy and plans re: language access.

• Also reach out to non-profit disease support centers like the National Diabetes Organization. (Note: This is on the list of the Providers Task Force, to reach out to provider organizations)

• Work with interpreting associations to get support. (Note: On list of interpreter task force)

• Contact the AMA and AHA (Note: Not government stakeholders, these are on the list for Healthcare administrators Task Force)

• Set up Google group letter campaign to get signed letters from all interpreters (Note: Already on list of Interpreter Task Force)

• Will form a Google group to communicate, have quarterly conference calls, use social media, Craig’s list to call out to other types of linguists, judicial interpreters, etc (Note: Our outreach stakeholder group is government entities only.)

• Concern about lobbying and going about it, how to present themselves so it doesn’t compromise 501c3 status of the National Board (Note: We will present ourselves as Advocates of the Government Task Force, not the National Board)

• Want to reach our goals by May 1, 2011

Medical Provider Task Force

Chair:

Nancy Zarenda

Participants:

Alexander, Eric j. Hardt MD, Juan Carlos, Melba Rodriguez, Michael Jordan, Nancy Zarenda, Rasis Reda-Alobeid, Sophia Rossovsky

Mission:

To foster awareness and support of working with credentialed medical interpreters for the safety and well-being of medical providers and patients. To promote reimbursement of language services to health care professionals.

Goal:

To engage medical providers and create a partnership with a renowned provider champion to accompany interpreters to difference places (increased credibility)

Stakeholders:

health profession associations, regulatory medical boards, national or state level; residency programs as target (future docs, RN‘s) to raise awareness on bridging language barriers; health provider Associations, migrant workers associations, hospital associations (Note: Healthcare Task Force already targeting hospital associations), John Hopkins, U. of Maryland.

• Target medical conferences (AAPA, APHA, NAPH, etc)

• Join online conferences on cultural competence

• Find other provider champions such as Dr. Hardt who can help us

• Media – medical journals, certification specific, major educational events, someone of the discipline, educational toolkit

• Components of tool kit: Bibliography – good research articles, power points, articles, focus on evidence vs. justice, data and graphs.

• Present data to providers in a language (visual concepts) in a way that they can relate to and focus on evidence to providers, target the group in a way that they can understand us, express objective evidence to get their buy-in

• Frequency of meeting: undecided but will determine that via e-mail

Insurance Task Force

Chair:

Doris Hernandez

Participants:

Charles Stanfield, Luis Bergolla, Odoardo Hernandez, Pamela Booth, Yolanda Milliken

Stakeholders:

All insurance companies, insurance associations, also state insurance departments, government regulators of insurance companies

Goals:

To reach out to insurance associations at the state and national level and identify leads.

1. inform and educate re: benefit of credentialed interpreter services

2. gather written intent to comply with our mission

3. gather and communicate to national associations any needs or complaints from stakeholders

Outreach: Send introductory letter to those identified leads and follow up with a call, use social networking media

Reporting: Summary of results published in a transparent way to inform all of the status quo of the task force activities

• Report card, snapshot, surveys to other companies to make them aware of what other companies in the same industry are doing

• If we can identify one insurance company that is advocating for use of interpreters, will use as a model.

Interpreter Task Force

Chair:

Lulu Sanchez

Participants:

Aliye Cirmen, Bianca daSilva, Dory Farero, Hortensia Carroll, Ingrid Leemar, Judith Santiago, Marilyn Holland, Susana Elbirt

Key stakeholders: fellow interpreters; interpreters that are unaware of the availability of National Certification, the IMIA, and advocacy initiatives.

Goal: To reach other interpreters, through social media, in order to increase awareness of national certification and the need for reimbursement. We recognize that the job of an interpreter can be very isolating. It is often difficult to know other interpreters even if we are working for the same company.

Solution:

To create opportunities for outreach to invite other interpreters to get certified by the National Board and to join twitter, Facebook and Linkedin (Note: and a professional association such as IMIA to stay informed and belong to a professional organization) Encourage message postings and questions.

Email members updates on certification development in other languages as our fellow interpreters are unaware of national certification being already available in Spanish. Our signature on our emails will be “Become a Certified Medical Interpreter!”

Note: We did not have an Employers Task Force meet this year.

May 1, 2010

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