Spanish-Language Communication of COVID-19 Information Across US Local Health Department Websites

Authors

Isabelle S Kusters
Amanda M Gutierrez
Julianna M Dean
Mark Sommer
Anna Klyueva

Publication Date

10-1-2023

Journal

Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities

DOI

36227453

PMID

36227453

PMCID

PMC9559270

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

10-13-2022

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Post-print

Published Open-Access

yes

Keywords

Humans, Communication Barriers, Pandemics, COVID-19, Communication, Language, Hispanic/Latino populations, Limited English Proficiency, COVID-19, Health communication

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new urgency to a longstanding problem: the US health system is not well-equipped to accommodate the country's large limited English proficient (LEP) population in times of national emergency. We examined the landscape of Spanish-language COVID-19 website information compared to information in English provided by health departments of the top 10 cities by population in the USA. For each city, coders evaluated three score measures (amount of information, presentation quality, and ease of navigation) for six content types (general information, symptoms, testing, prevention, vaccines, and live statistics) across six delivery modes (print resources, website text, videos, external links, data visualization, and media toolkits). We then calculated a grand average, combining all cities' values per score measure for each content type-delivery mode combination, to understand the landscape of Spanish-language information across the country. Overall, we found that, for all cities combined, nearly all content types and delivery modes in Spanish were inferior or non-existent compared to English resources. Our findings also showed much variability and spread concerning content type and delivery mode of information. Finally, our findings uncovered three main clusters of content type and delivery mode combinations for Spanish-language information, ranging from similar to worse, compared to information in English. Our findings suggest that COVID-19 information was not equivalently provided in Spanish, despite federal guidance regarding language access during times of national emergency. These results can inform ongoing and future emergency communication plans for Spanish-preferring LEP and other LEP populations in the USA.