¡A Su Salud!  Spanish For Health Professionals   

Project Director:  Claire Lorch, MSW  clorch@email.unc.edu

Location:  Office of the Provost

Participants:  Although the course materials are still being developed at this time, plans are underway to make this course available to residential and distance education students in the health professions and social work.

 

¡A Su Salud! promotes spoken Spanish fluency and related cultural competency to practicing health professionals and students through a distance learning course offered for elective credit.  The goal is to improve communication, which will in turn, improve access to health care services, and ultimately, the outcomes of care for recent Latino immigrants.

 

The rapid immigration of Latinos into North Carolina and across the U.S. has caught health care providers unprepared.  Too few providers speak Spanish, have access to translators, or have adequate knowledge of the immigrants’ culture necessary to address immigrant needs. Thus, the quality of healthcare to this growing Latino population is seriously compromised.

 

To meet this need, UNC-Chapel Hill established an Interdisciplinary Committee to create an anytime-anywhere course in Spanish language and culture using cutting edge technology.  ¡A Su Salud!  (“To Your Health”) provides an approach to learning that is flexible enough to accommodate the residential students’crammed course schedule and the distance degree professional students’ and practitioners’ work life. 

 

The final product will be a courseware package combining a dramatic scenario with related exercises on DVD.  Spanish language and culture lessons are drawn from the story line using other web based activities, and a workbook.  A fully functional pilot episode has recently been tested and the evaluation data is currently being analyzed.

 

The multi-disciplinary team creating this course has expertise in Spanish language instruction, health professions training, distance learning technology, and the development of educational media products.  This team consists of experts not only from the University’s Committee but also from the media and publishing community.

 

Financial support for this work comes from the UNC Office of the Provost and the US Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education (FIPSE).  Negotiations are currently underway to partner with Yale University Press to publish the workbook and instructor's manual.