Evaluating Local Multilingual Health Care Information Environments on the Internet: A Pilot Study.
Int J Environ Res Public Health
; 18(13)2021 06 25.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE | ID: covidwho-1302300
ABSTRACT
For foreign-born populations, difficulty in finding health care information in their primary language is a structural barrier to accessing timely health care. While such information may be available at a national level, it may not always be relevant or appropriate to the living situations of these people. Our objective was to explore the quality of online multilingual health information environments by pilot-testing a framework for assessing such information at the prefectural level in Japan. The framework consisted of five health care domains (health system, hospitals, emergency services, medical interpreters, and health insurance). Framework scores varied considerably among prefectures; many resources were machine-translated. These scores were significantly associated with foreign population proportion and the number of hospitals in each prefecture. Our multilingual health care information environment (MHCIE) framework provides a measure of health access inclusivity, which has not been quantified before. It is adaptable to other international contexts, but further validation is required.
Keywords
Full text:
Available
Collection:
International databases
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Multilingualism
Type of study:
Experimental Studies
/
Prognostic study
Limits:
Humans
Country/Region as subject:
Asia
Language:
English
Year:
2021
Document Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Ijerph18136836
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