The PAVC project aims to address the needs of linguistically diverse communities whose members have limited English proficiency and are interested in receiving care virtually.
The PAVC collaborative is developing a resource that will focus on the needs of individuals who have limited English proficiency and are Deaf or Hard of Hearing and would like to receive care virtually.
The resource will guide best practices for virtual health visits, particularly when language services are needed when accessing information or communicating in a health care setting.
To build the resource, the collaborative needs your input.
The patient survey will be made available in the six most-accessed languages: American Sign Language (ASL), French, Spanish, Punjabi, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. Both surveys are now open until May 17.
Our project team aims to create PHSA-wide resource(s) which will outline appropriate (safe, high quality, and culturally sensitive) virtual health interactions between health care teams and community members, including patients, families and caregivers.
Despite the rise in linguistically diverse communities across B.C., there is a lack of focus on equitable language access across the health care system. As a result, our community members and health care staff often encounter great challenges due to language barriers when receiving, or providing care.
Thus, through our project and deliverables, we aim to specifically address the needs of linguistically diverse communities who have limited English proficiency and are interested to receive care virtually.
It is important for this initiative to have an informed lens from those with lived and living experiences. With that in mind, this project is co-led by a patient partner and a language access lead from the Provincial Language Services language access lead, who is a member of the Deaf, Deaf-Blind and Hard of Hearing (DDBHH) community. Additionally, the project working group includes patient partner representation from the following language constituencies:
- Francophone
- Spanish
- Indigenous DDBHH community
We want to ensure the resource(s) we develop include voices of those who are directly involved in receiving and providing virtual care. Therefore, our planning efforts will be informed by engagement with health care teams (including providers and administration staff) and community members.
- Online Focus group/interviews
- Online survey: To be launched by January 2024
- Online patient journey mapping
- Online focus groups
- Online survey: To be launched in April 2024
- To apply for engagement, please review
this document.
