More Alumni Profiles . . .
Deianni points out that most of us have grown up bombarded with information and concepts we're not even aware we're absorbing. Gingivitis, calcium, smoking, safe sex, prevention, cancer—we often know meaning of these words from TV, radio, and conversations. They're constantly in our periphery. As a result, we all know what a mammogram is, and how to ask for one. The overwhelming majority of deaf children grow up with hearing parents, most of whom do not use ASL proficiently. The lucky five percent of deaf children who grow up with parents who are also deaf and do sign are still lacking those peripheral exposures hearing people have. Add to that doctors' complaints that deaf patients take more time to treat, they cannot communicate their medical concerns directly to doctors, and the low-literacy levels of most deaf people, and you can see why health care for deaf people is so deficient.
Deianni directs an agency called ASL Interpreter Network, which matches about 110 freelance interpreters with deaf clients. The interpreters accompany their clients to clinic visits in medical centers located throughout the Seattle metropolitan area. She received her MPH from the Extended MPH Degree Program in 2007—her motivation to attend the program coming from her desire to increase her effectiveness through a better understanding of our health care system. She has become a better advocate for her clients, she says, because she can now see them within the larger context of all non-English speakers who also face challenges in understanding health information and receiving health care. (In her research, she continually had to make a case as to why deaf people are not English speaking.) And because she understands the system better and is more of an insider now, she can help clinicians better understand their deaf patients.
Deianni believes there are "nice partnerships to be made between the non-English-speaking community and the speaking population." In her everyday work, though, she still sees challenges. She encourages all of us to turn on our TV captioning and see all the typos, misspellings, and inaccurate translations—and imagine those captions are in Spanish.
Alumni Profile
The Best People are in Public Health: Ginevra Deianni
Imagine you are a deaf woman, getting your first mammogram at age 55—a suspicious mass is detected. Your doctor, through your interpreter, tells you that you have advanced cancer. Or you are a young, deaf man who has tested positive for HIV/AIDS. You knew it was important to use condoms, but you didn't know you should use one every time. Ginevra Deianni, MPH, an interpreter for the deaf, has accompanied her clients from diagnosis to death in both scenarios above. She says, "It's devastating to see patients dying because they didn't get the right information." She believes that if these individuals had had access to health information, their deaths might not have occurred. It is her mission not only to improve communication between clinicians and her clients, but also to make English speakers aware of the gaps in information that exist for non-hearing people. American Sign Language (ASL), she will tell you, is not manually coded English. It is a language of pictures, and some common words are not easily conveyed through pictures. "Take four pills" is an example. To a deaf person, "take" means to take something away, not "swallow." And the sign concepts for "pap smear," "mammogram," and other medical terms are not directly transferable to written words. Are you beginning to see the challenges? Deianni explains, "If we see deafness only as a physical disability, we're missing the linguistic and cultural impact of language."Deianni points out that most of us have grown up bombarded with information and concepts we're not even aware we're absorbing. Gingivitis, calcium, smoking, safe sex, prevention, cancer—we often know meaning of these words from TV, radio, and conversations. They're constantly in our periphery. As a result, we all know what a mammogram is, and how to ask for one. The overwhelming majority of deaf children grow up with hearing parents, most of whom do not use ASL proficiently. The lucky five percent of deaf children who grow up with parents who are also deaf and do sign are still lacking those peripheral exposures hearing people have. Add to that doctors' complaints that deaf patients take more time to treat, they cannot communicate their medical concerns directly to doctors, and the low-literacy levels of most deaf people, and you can see why health care for deaf people is so deficient.
Deianni directs an agency called ASL Interpreter Network, which matches about 110 freelance interpreters with deaf clients. The interpreters accompany their clients to clinic visits in medical centers located throughout the Seattle metropolitan area. She received her MPH from the Extended MPH Degree Program in 2007—her motivation to attend the program coming from her desire to increase her effectiveness through a better understanding of our health care system. She has become a better advocate for her clients, she says, because she can now see them within the larger context of all non-English speakers who also face challenges in understanding health information and receiving health care. (In her research, she continually had to make a case as to why deaf people are not English speaking.) And because she understands the system better and is more of an insider now, she can help clinicians better understand their deaf patients.
Deianni believes there are "nice partnerships to be made between the non-English-speaking community and the speaking population." In her everyday work, though, she still sees challenges. She encourages all of us to turn on our TV captioning and see all the typos, misspellings, and inaccurate translations—and imagine those captions are in Spanish.
