Harvard Medical School

Just about everybody knows there’s a disparity in health outcomes between LEP patients and native English speakers. From Harvard researchers, here’s a partial explantation.

In a recently published study in JAMA Pediatrics, the study team established that LEP patients are less apt to ask providers follow up questions regarding their children’s treatment.

Compared to English-speaking families, the LEP families were half as likely to speak up when something seemed wrong and about one-fifth as likely to question the decisions of healthcare professionals.

“Nobody knows a child better than their parents, we should be listening to them,” said researcher Nancy Spector in STAT, a news publication covering health and life sciences.

Family members can often be more able to notice abnormal behavior in their children than providers, and more likely to see when things are going wrong. To make sure that LEP patients are more inclined to ask followup questions, the researchers recommended that interpreters be present for all interactions between doctors and LEP patients or families with LEP.

Read more about the study here.