The System is Failing Deaf Patients and the Data Shows It
Imagine needing help in an emergency… and being handed a form you don’t understand. No interpreter. Your child asked to translate. Emergency alerts - missed entirely.
This is the reality for many Deaf American Sign Language users. We face pervasive systemic barriers that others never have to think about. Research shows Deaf ASL users have 7x worse health literacy than hearing individuals, regardless of education. The system was never built for us.
💡 These insights came from powerful discussions at the 2024 Innovation & Advocacy Summit hosted by the Patient Advocate Foundation on achieving health justice: www.patientadvocate.org.
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Transcript and Video Description
[Video Description: The post has a video thumbnail with blue shading overlaid. The middle has a text bubble that reads “The system is failing deaf patients and the data shows it” in white text with rose background. A yellow banner at the top of the video has “Achieving HEALTH JUSTICE Together” in white text, with “Fall 2024 Innovation Summit” in the corner of the banner. In the video, a woman with blonde wavy hair is sitting in front of the camera with shelves, books, and decorative items behind her. She is wearing a maroon shirt.
Transcript: We are given forms that we don’t understand because it is in English and English isn’t our first language. We don’t get an interpreter that we asked for. There’s a lot of other traumatic situations that individuals go through. For example, asking a child who has deaf parents to interpret in an emergency situation because the hospital doesn’t have the “budget” for interpreters. Oftentimes we don’t understand, or misunderstand, public emergency announcements - we are the last to know what’s going on. So with all of these experiences and barriers in the healthcare system, research shows that deaf ASL users are likely to have 7 times worse health literacy than their hearing counterparts, regardless of education. So you could have a PhD degree and still will run into these barriers that are in our healthcare system. [The screen fades to show a thumbnail of a faded white background of a doctor holding hands with another individual] Deaf. Healthy. DeafHealth. Learn more at www.deafhealthaccess.org.].[The screen fades to show a thumbnail of a blue lighthouse] Paf. Patient Advocate Foundation. www.patientadvocate.org]