WCUSpanish Students at Undergrad Research Conference

 Humanities at WCU      November 15, 2019

Annie Vasquez and José Ruano represented WCUSpanish at the SURF conference in Wofford College, in Spartanburg, SC. Both presented papers on issues affecting the Latinx community in our state. You can read the abstracts of both papers below:

Annie Vasquez - Farmworker Burdens in the Carolinas:

Agriculture and related industries represent over one-fifth of North Carolina’s income, and 85% of the fruits and vegetables are produced by migrant farmworkers. Despite the obvious importance of their contributions—economic and otherwise—to our region, farmworkers work tirelessly year around, in horrendous working conditions, while not always getting the appreciation, pay, access to healthcare, and housing conditions that they deserve. While spending a summer as an intern with Vecinos Farmworker Health Program, a nonprofit that provides free healthcare to farmworkers in western North Carolina, I saw first-hand what a typical agriculture worker’s life looks like. As a result of this experience, I’ve developed a passion for learning more about this population, hoping to better their lives as well as raise awareness about them so that others may do the same. In this presentation, I will bring together my internship experience and additional research on three issues that are particularly burdensome for farmworkers in the Carolinas: unfair wages, poor housing conditions, and limited access to healthcare.

José Ruano - The Effects of Linguistics in Healthcare of Spanish-Speaking Communities 

Communication is the most important tool in a healthcare setting to provide correct procedures and improving patient satisfaction. Healthcare systems are facing many medical errors due to insufficient patient language proficiency. Language barriers may lead to medical errors by impeding patient-provider communication. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the linguistic issues of healthcare in Spanish-speaking communities. Control studies have been conducted to demonstrate whether hospitalized pediatric patients whose families have a language barrier significantly increased risk for serious medical events during pediatric hospitalization in comparison to families without a language barrier. There are many factors that are tied into the issue such as, using family members as interpreters, clinicians not using qualified interpreters, and cultural beliefs.