Dalila Vasquez Herrera is a 2016 graduate who majored in Biology and Spanish. She was awarded a Spring 2016 Independent Grant which she used to conduct research on language and healthcare communication in Oaxaca and Huajuapan de Leon, Mexico. Read more about her project in the Emory Report.
“They’re Mexican, so
they speak Spanish.” These words appeared an article in The New York Times about a hospital
official in New York who called a Mexican organization to help her understand some
Mexican patients. The quote above is what the hospital official responded when
the person at the Mexican organization asked her if she had asked what language
the family spoke. The hospital official just assumed they spoke Spanish, but the
family actually spoke Mixtec, one of the
many indigenous languages spoken within the borders of the Mexican nation-state
and across Central America. This situation is not surprising to me because I’ve
experienced this linguistic and cultural disconnect on numerous occasions during
the last eight years that I have been living in the United States. I grew up
speaking Mixtec in a small rural town in Mexico and learned Spanish in school (but
even there everyone else in the school spoke Mixtec). Anyway, for instance,
many people now ask me why I’m majoring in Spanish if it’s my first language
since I’m Mexican? Therefore, with this project I want to explore not only the
implications of language and culture barriers
in medicine and healthcare, but also present to people in the United States
a less known community of immigrants.
This is my first experience with a research project, so I’m
learning aspects of the research process that I did not know about previously.
For instance, I didn’t think I would need IRB
approval for this project since it didn’t involve a life science type of
experimentation. But I quickly learned that since my project involves
interviewing human subjects, confidentiality must be guaranteed, and
consent forms must be obtained in
all languages used in the research (English, Spanish, Mixtec; an additional
consideration is how to obtain consent from study participants who are not
literate). There are other issues that require careful consideration in order
to ensure few risks to the participants. This of course took longer than I
expected because I had to do multiple revisions and incorporate a number of changes
suggested by the IRB.
While waiting for the IRB approval necessary to move forward
with the field research aspects of my project, most of my research has focused
on gathering data from journals and books to lay the foundations of the subject
that I wish to present; my work has focused primarily on ethnobotany and
discussions of healthcare delivery to immigrant communities in the US. This phase
of the project has included regular meetings with my advisor and discussing
ideas and receiving advice from her about bibliography and organization of the
project. Finally, about a week ago, I
received IRB exemption of my project
so now I can move forward with the interviewing aspect of my research. This
spring break I’m planning to travel to Mexico to carry out interviews and
gather information about the Mixtec community.
My project is about intercultural relationships in medicine,
specifically how they are reflected in different languages being used by
physicians and their patients. My research focuses on a Mixtec-speaking
community in Mexico, particularly on how members of that community seek medical
services in both Mixtec and non-Mixtec areas. The first part of the analysis
will be to to observe the communication between Mixtec local healers and their
Mixtec patients (where both healer and patient share the same language). The
second part of the analysis will be to observe the communication between Mixtec
patients and their non-Mixtec physicians in their local town as well as in a nearby
Spanish speaking city. All this data will be compared to the situation of
Mixtec immigrants in the United States. My principle method for gathering data
is by interviewing Mixtec local healers in Yucuquimi
de Ocampo, Mexico and Spanish speaking doctors in Yucuquimi and Huajuapan de León – the district city
to which Yucuquimi belongs and where people from Yucuquimi seek services not
available in their small rural town. I’m excited to finally start working on
this big part of my project now that I have secured the appropriate IRB
authorization. (Written spring semester 2016.)
Visit the Undergraduate Research Programs website to learn more about applying for Independent Research Grants.
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