Language pedagogy and Latino health

Abstract

The issues related to fairness in language credentialing in health care have been addressed in the field through the development of context-specific assessments. Teachers and students sense the ways in which language contributes to inequities and they take intentional steps to remedy those inequities by expanding access and improving communication for Spanish speakers. Spanish for Latino Health expands current conceptualizations of Medical Spanish by adding dimensions of health/communicative inequities, ethical listening, and translanguaging to the content and the method of teaching and learning. The major theoretical insights proposed as central to the project of teaching Spanish for Latino Health provide instructors and curriculum designers mechanisms to ensure that Spanish language teaching is always connected to the wider entanglements of Spanish in health care in the United States. Language is a complex multifunctional phenomenon that links an individual to other individuals, to communities, and to national cultures.