<body><div>Johnson County has begun to implement a new language access plan, which sets countywide policy and procedures for how language access will be approached.The county is home to people from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. According to the Johnson County Steering Committee, 14-15 percent of residents speak a non-English language at home, prompting the county to create and implement a language access plan. Johnson County workday specialist and previous community engagement policy coordinator Paola Jaramillo Guayara, has been working on the language access plan since 2023. She said the plan is an American Rescue Plan Act project, or ARPA.Counties received ARPA funding in 2021 with the purpose of aiding public health and economic development after the COVID-19 pandemic. The Daily Iowan previously reported Johnson County received $29.3 million in ARPA funds.Guayara said employees in the county’s front-facing offices felt they weren’t able to best serve residents with low or limited English proficiency. She further explained with a variety of roles and departments in the county, their language access processes were inconsistent across the county.Guayara said in departments like the recorder’s office, if there is a mistranslation or misinterpretation of a letter in a name, it could cause delays that could last months.“Underneath the entire program is the reality that we want any community member to walk into any part of Johnson County or any touch point they might have with our local government entity and have a really positive customer service experience,” Guayara said.Before the county created its own language access plan, it had to assess areas of improvement and understand what aspects they find most beneficial in interpretation and translation services. To make this assessment, Johnson County partnered with Amy Coffman of Lighting up Language.Coffman works with organizations and local governments at varying levels of accessibility.“You really have to go through and assess where they’re at in their own processes,” Coffman said. “You can either start from the very beginning, or pick up with the things that they have and improve it and move it along.”Johnson County Public Health had already been using translation services to best serve their patients in accordance with the law. By connecting with other departments in the steering committee, public health director Danielle Pettit-Majewski could share the resources in use and the policies they abide by.“If you are our patient and you don’t speak English, we are going to use a translator, even if you bring in your partner,” Pettit-Majewski said.She said they don’t want to put relatives in the position to deliver high-stakes information. Pettit-Majewski also said some people can translate casual conversation, but when it comes to medical translation, not everyone is equipped with health literacy.Considering these ideas, the language access plan has a policy framework that calls for qualified interpreters and protection of minors, which prohibits relying on children under 18 or family members to interpret. The plan also includes a framework for plain language targeting sixth- to eighth-grade reading levels and vendor AI limited to directional content policies.Guayara has put a lot of passion into developing this project. She said English was not her first language, and growing up she saw a lot of difficult moments happen when a community member had limited or low English proficiency.“It makes them often question their own intelligence, value, worth,” Guayara said.Part of the language access plan is centralizing the translation services the county uses. After evaluating vendors, the county decided on Boostlingo as the primary partner and MasterWord Services as a secondary partner.Pettit-Majewski and the public health team used BoostLingo prior to the plan, and on the back of all their badges is the phone number to get immediate translation services. She said when clients are scheduled back-to-back, waiting 30 minutes on translation hinders quality patient care.“We wanted to make sure we could find a resource that would allow us to stay on our schedule, but make sure that we were giving clients the information they needed in a way they could understand,” Pettit-Majewski said.She said it is also important that professionals are speaking to and looking at the client and not the translator. She wants the clients to feel informed, so they are best able to make decisions for their family.She also remembers how vulnerable the healthcare system can be. She said being pregnant was one of the most vulnerable experiences she’s had as a native English speaker with high health literacy.“If people don’t feel safe, they’re not going to come back,” Pettit-Majewski said. “If they don’t come back for that care, then that mother or that child may not get the care that they need.” In addition, language access extends beyond verbal translation. People who have low vision or are hard of hearing should feel confident they can be independent to get the services they need. Then, language access extends to reading literacy. Many Americans read at a sixth- to eighth-grade reading level, but sometimes legal or medical documents far surpass that.Coffman said one of the ways to increase accessibility is to have an interpreter reword documents into a sixth- to eighth-grade reading level before they are translated. She said this reduces the number of words, making it easier for anyone to read, and it reduces the cost of translation.“There are many areas of the globe where people have been in refugee camps for 25-plus years, and education has not been present, so they have not had a chance to become literate within their own language, let alone English,” Coffman said.As the county improves its language accessibility and centralizes its plan across departments, it will continue to assess areas of improvement with an annual audit.“I would hope that community members walk away feeling confident not only in the information that they received, but also in what they shared,” Guayara said.</div></body>

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Johnson County has begun to implement a new language access plan, which sets countywide policy and procedures for how language access will be approached. The county is home to people from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. According to the Johnson County Steering Committee, 14-15 percent of residents speak a non-English language at home, prompting the county to create and implement a language access plan.

JoCo takes steps to implement a language access plan by the new year

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Johnson County has begun to implement a new language access plan, which sets countywide policy and procedures for how language access will be approached. T

JoCo takes steps to implement a language access plan by the new year

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