The integration of emergency language services in COVID-19 response: a call for the linguistic turn in public health
Jeconiah Louis Dreisbach, Sharon Mendoza-Dreisbach
Abstract
Linguistic barriers in health services on a multilingual society could bring patients to a life-threatening situation as they might not be able to express their symptoms to a healthcare provider or a medical professional. 1 Earlier studies published in this journal prove that overcoming linguistic barriers create trust and participation among patients belong to minority groups 2 and reduces patient nonattendance in required medical treatments necessary for their illnesses' remedy. n this globalized world, it is inevitable that when the COVID-19 global pandemic ends, the 'new normal' will be back to 'normal' and intercultural contact will continue as we learn to adapt to living with the virus in our midst just as similar pandemics that our predecessors in history have experienced. As there exist 7117 living languages in the world, 4 most of which have undergone the process of intellectualization in the field of public health, the current pandemic that we are experiencing hastened the need for the medical professionals to localize and internationalize public health education materials in various languages. 5 Going beyond English language-centric knowledge production in public health studies are needed to combat COVID-19 and future pandemics that may arise. Li et al . 6 suggested that there is a need for an 'epistemological shift from the global north to the global south where multilingual realities form thousands of years of history and civilization, and where indigenous knowledge constitutes the essence of guiding principles embedded in social practice'. This includes recognizing the significance of language diversity in public health responses and healthcare workplace settings.