Qualitative Research Examining the Implementation of the Medical Interpreter Pilot Project, California Department of Health Care Services
Hector Rodriguez, Professor
Public Health
Closed. This professor is continuing with Fall 2024 apprentices on this project; no new apprentices needed for Spring 2025.
Quality of care disparities between patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) and patients proficient in English have been well documented. Language barriers between patients and providers can lead to medical errors, poor chronic condition management, and undue difficulty accessing care. LEP status is highly correlated with other risk factors for low quality of care, including being uninsured, low income, having lower educational attainment, and being born outside of the U.S.. In California, an estimated 7 million people speak English “less than very well”, making professional medical interpretation a key resource for addressing quality of care disparities.
Community health centers (CHCs) care for underserved populations, including a substantial share of LEP patients; however, these organizations frequently do not have the financial resources or staffing bandwidth to hire dedicated medical interpreters. CHCs also face operational challenges when accessing external language vendors to provide interpretation for languages of lesser diffusion (languages that represent <5% of the service population).
In accordance with Senate Bill 165 (Atkins, Chapter 365, Statutes of 2019), the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) implemented the Medical Interpreter Pilot Project (MIPP) to evaluate the provision of culturally-competent, professional medical interpretation services for Medi-Cal members with LEP at three CHC sites in different geographic regions of California. The UC Berkeley Center of Healthcare Organizational and Innovation Research (CHOIR) is leading this independent impact evaluation of MIPP and the URAP student will help the research team advance the qualitative component of the evaluation, which will be used to inform implementation strategies and recommendations for future implementation of initiatives like MIPP.
Role: Responsibilities of the student include:
● Transcript cleaning, coding and qualitative analyses of interview data using NVIVO software.
● Table construction and reference management for the planned manuscripts.
● Co-authorship opportunities are available.
Qualifications: ● Interest in healthcare organizational efforts to provide culturally competent care to LEP populations
● Strong writing skills
● Experience with reference management.
● Experience or interest in coding interview data
● Experience or interest in analyzing interview data using qualitative analysis software (e.g., Nvivo, Atlas.ti, Dedoose, etc.).
● Strong communication skills and intellectual curiosity are preferred.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Jacob Chen, MPH, Staff Researcher
Hours: 6-8 hrs
Off-Campus Research Site: Hybrid work
Related website: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21501319241264168
Related website: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21501319241264168