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The U.S. Hispanic market is massive – and growing larger at a dizzying rate.

There are more than 130 million multicultural Americans, making up nearly 38 percent of the total population. One out of five of these multicultural Americans is Hispanic. There are nearly 60 million Hispanics living in the U.S. today, and that number will grow by 12 million over the next five years. In fact, by 2050, the U.S. is expected to be the world’s largest Spanish-speaking country.

These are a lot of numbers, but what does it all mean to the average American business?

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Does your organization provide interpretation or translation for limited-English speakers?

If you answered “yes,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would like to hear from you.  

Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act asserts that healthcare organizations and programs that accept funding from HHS must provide meaningful access to care for limited-English patients and beneficiaries.  This includes written communication notifying them of free language-access services like interpretation and translation.

The Trump Administration wants to remove this and other important provisions, including removing quality standards for video remote interpretation (VRI) and recommendations that covered entities develop language access plans.

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Like physicians, pharmacies play an important role in empowering patients to take charge of their health.

Unfortunately, language barriers often make it more difficult for non-English speaking customers to ask important questions about their medication, take it as directed, and be aware of potential side effects.

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Nearly half the residents of Lowndes County, Mississippi, are ethnic minorities, many of whom speak limited English.

For more than a decade, Baptist County Memorial Hospital has used a dual-handset phone to provide language access to patients who are not fluent in English.

Baptist has eight of the phones, which provide round-the-clock connections to LanguageLine’s 10,000-plus professional interpreters. The patient holds one handset, the doctor holds the other, and the language interpreter is remote.

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Each week, LanguageLine selects and excerpts five stories about language and culture that we think readers will find intriguing. Here is this week’s “Liner Notes”:

There were more 27-year-olds in the United States than people of any other age in 2018. But for white Americans, the most common age was 58, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data.

According to the analysis, non-Hispanic whites tend to skew toward the older end of the spectrum, while racial and ethnic minority groups – who include everyone except single-race non-Hispanic whites – skew younger.

The most common age was 11 for Hispanics, 27 for blacks and 29 for Asians as of last July, the latest estimates available. Americans of two or more races were by far the youngest racial or ethnic group in the Census Bureau data, with a most common age of just 3 years old. Among all racial and ethnic minorities, the most common age was 27.

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Did you know that by 2045, ethnic minorities will be the majority of the U.S. population?

Or that immigration will be responsible for almost 90 percent of America’s population growth between now and then? Are you aware that in just over 30 years, the U.S. is expected to have more Spanish speakers than any other country?

America’s cultural shifts are gaining speed. The demographic changes that have gradually occurred over the course of our history will pass an important demarcation point, as ethnic minorities will make up the majority of the U.S. population within 25 years.

LanguageLine’s new infographic, “America’s ‘Majority Minority’ Future,” paints a picture of a United States that will be much more multicultural and multilingual than it is today. You can download the new infographic by clicking here.

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We are in the midst of the time of year that has come to be known as “hurricane season.” Sadly, it is also a period when we are reminded that the needs of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing are sometimes minimized and even forgotten during an emergency.

Approximately 35 million Americans are hearing impaired. It has been well documented that training designed to help communicate with this community during a disaster is rare and frequently lacks standardization or integration into a formal emergency management plan.

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Atlantic City is best recognized as a transient resort area memorialized by Bruce Springsteen. Now Atlantic City is becoming known for something else: its diversity. More than two dozen languages are spoken in the school system alone.

Linguistic hurdles present challenges to the Atlantic City police force, which is making gains in navigating cultural differences and building trust.

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Language access should be a key component of every disaster plan, especially given the reality that one out of every five U.S. households speaks a language other than English.

One in nine U.S. residents is limited English proficient (LEP), meaning they speak English “less than very well.” In an emergency situation, these individuals are often the most vulnerable.

Unfortunately, caring for the needs of limited English speakers in the face of an emergency is not always the priority it should be. Any individual in an impacted area must have access to disaster information in a language they can understand; if they don’t, the consequences can be deadly.

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Each week, LanguageLine selects and excerpts five stories about language and culture that we think readers will find intriguing. Here is this week’s “Liner Notes”:

The Conference Board of Canada, a non-profit think tank dedicated to researching and analyzing economic trends, just released an analysis of Canada’s macro demographics. They reveal that by 2040, one in four Canadian residents will be 65 or over. People age 65 or over are going to become 25 percent of the country’s population, as compared to being only 17 percent today.   Marry that with low Canadian birth rate, and it’s a formula for economic disaster. To maintain Canada’s social infrastructure, the country must have more people, which it will achieve through immigration.

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