A study released by the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center hits close to home.

The study showed that Latina women who prefer speaking Spanish are more likely than other ethnic groups to express regret or dissatisfaction with their breast cancer treatment, despite receiving similar treatment and reporting similar levels of involvement with their doctor in deciding the treatment plan compared to white women.

Nearly half of the women surveyed were Latina, with a quarter preferring to speak Spanish. These women were 3.5 times more likely than English-speaking Latinas to have difficulty understanding written information about breast cancer.

“Even though they received similar amounts of information as whites, Latinas who prefer speaking Spanish reported a strong desire for more information. Doctors may need to make additional effort to ensure this information is understandable and culturally appropriate for all ethnic groups to improve the decision making process for breast cancer patients,” says lead study author Sarah T. Hawley, Ph.D., assistant professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School and a research investigator at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System.

This hits close to home for me as I have lost two non-English tias to breast cancer and remember the process of translating and explaining the procedures and options they had from medical English to Puerto Rican Spanish. Currently I have a tia who is struggling with cancer and she speaks, reads and write English perfectly and still deciphering all the treatment options, benefits and side effects, percentages of success and survival is a challenge. There are no social workers or translators at any of the hospitals I have been in and out of with my tias, leaving other family members to break down complicated medical options that really are a matter of life and death.

So for me it’s more than just making sure that information is linguistically understandable, it’s about making sure that it is accessible in a way that people can really understand and make informed choices. This included offering so called “alternative” options to the tons of chemicals routinely pumped into women’s cuerpos as a way to kill one illness only to cause another.

Via / Hispanic Tips y Science Daily