Opinion: Why is Columbus' website for non-English speakers being used around the world?
Teresa Canfield is a regional nurse manager for Mount Carmel Health System. Jayne Moreau is program director of health system patient education for The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Cathy Patton is senior consultant of patient education for OhioHealth. Marcie L. Rehmar is director of community education at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
The Health Information Translations website began in 2005, when the four hospital systems in central Ohio realized they were all trying to create patient education materials for non-English-speaking patients.
They were duplicating efforts and unable to keep up with the demand and changing trends.
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With the help of the Central Ohio Hospital Council, the four systems have combined forces and launched a Health Information Translations website containing more than 3,500 documents in up to 19 languages, depending on the topic.
While still focused on the needs of Columbus area patients, health providers in other U.S. cities and around the world access the Health Information Translations website hundreds of times a day to find materials for use with their patients.
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The National Library of Medicine links to more than 280 Health Information Translations titles and 3,000 separate documents and considers it a primary resource for plain-language, culturally sensitive translated health information in the United States.
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A key to Health Information Translations’s quality control is its “back translation” process, in which native language speakers translate documents into their language, then another native speaker of the same language translates it back to English. This version is then compared to the original and discrepancies are ironed out or wording revised.
Here are a few more highlights about Health Information Translations:
Primary languages for each title: Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, European French, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Nepali, Russian, Somali, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
High volume: In 2021, more than 85,000 visitors accessed the Health Information Translations website.
Worldwide reach: 34% of 2021 Health Information Translations website visitors came from outside the U.S. Top countries include: Japan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, South Korea, and the Philippines.
Prestigious users: Among the top users of Health Information Translations content, besides Columbus’s four hospital systems, are: U.S. National Library of Medicine, Hospital Corporation of America, Mayo Clinic, U.K. National Health Service, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Emory Healthcare, Vanderbilt Health, Baptist Health and University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
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While Health Information Translations documents are intended to be used in the presence of a health care professional who is familiar with a patient’s specific health condition, they are available to anyone free of charge at www.healthinfotranslations.org.
An updated and more user-friendly version of the Health Information Translations website was launched on Oct. 24 in celebration of International Health Literacy Month 2022.
Teresa Canfield is a regional nurse manager for Mount Carmel Health System. Jayne Moreau is program director of health system patient education for The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. Cathy Patton is senior consultant of patient education for OhioHealth. Marcie L. Rehmar is director of community education at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: What is The Health Information Translations website and how does it help?
