Sep 29, 2010 14:30 GMT  ·  By

A new study finds that language barriers could play an important role in health care disparities, and that people who do not speak English at home, are less likely to receive CRC screenings, compared to those who do speak English at home.

The study was carried out by researchers from Boston Medical Center (BMC) and Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH), and they concluded that patient-provider language barriers play a role in health-care disparities, and that providers should promote the importance of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening to non-English speaking patients.

The researchers made a retrospective study of three types of individuals age 50 years and older: English-concordant (speaking English at home), Other Language-Concordant (did not speak English at home but someone at their provider's office spoke their language) and Other Language-Discordant (did not speak English at home and no one at their provider's spoke their language).

The results showed that non-English speakers had lower CRC screening rates than English speakers.

Also, the Other Language-Discordant group had similar screening levels to the English-Concordant group, but higher than the Other Language-Concordant group.

Lead author Amy Linsky, MD, a fellow in general internal medicine at BMC said that the initial findings are confirming other reports.

“However, in our adjusted model, we found that those who did not speak English at home but who had someone at their provider's office who spoke their preferred language, had the lowest rate of CRC screening and this was unexpected,” she added.

Co-investigator Nathalie McIntosh, a doctoral student in health Policy and Management at BUSPH added that the “results suggest that providers should especially promote the importance of CRC screenings to non-English speaking patients, but that patient-provider language barriers do not fully account for lower CRC screening in patients who do not speak English at home.”

The scientists admitted though that they did not account for patient characteristics, provider cultural competence, patient acculturation, the quality of patient-provider communication, and the level of patient health literacy including obtaining colorectal cancer screening.

As the United States have a huge ethnic and linguistic diversity, ”professional interpreters and language-concordant providers may be necessary, but not sufficient to mitigate these disparities," Linsky added.

According to data from the 2005 American Community Survey, minorities represent 26% of the population, and almost 20% of Americans speak a language other than English at home.

By 2050, minorities should stand for nearly half of the US population.

The findings appear on-line in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.