Our History
About us
About us
The Medical Translation & Interpretation Leadership Group (MTI) is a community task force of professionals representing both public and private organizations who are focused on improving both access to and quality of care to the region’s Limited English Proficient (*LEP) populations.
In 2001-02, the Community Health Endowment of Lincoln (CHE) began working with local health/human service agencies, ethnic cultural centers, community-based organizations, and the general public to implement The Blueprint Project, a comprehensive planning process to develop neighborhood-based solutions to improve the health status of individuals in Lincoln census tracts 4, 17, and 18. (These census tracts were identified as areas that exceeded the community average in five key areas: poverty, infant mortality, neighborhood conditions, death rates, and ethnic/minority population.) A consensus observation of The Blueprint Project was that “Healthcare access can be improved through a coordinated and innovative network of medical translation and interpretation.” To address this observation, partners in The Blueprint Project recommended that CHE “convene a local leadership group to develop a plan that addresses medical translation and interpretation.” CHE agreed to facilitate this effort in partnership with the New Americans Task Force (NATF).
Beginning in December 2004, CHE and NATF collaborated to convene nine focus groups to gain a better understanding of the quality and availability of MTI services in Lincoln, Nebraska. The focus groups targeted a variety of stakeholders including New Americans, policymakers, healthcare professionals, and human service providers. As a summary of the focus group feedback, CHE and NATF identified 12 observations of the current status of MTI services. These observations are reported on this website.
In the spring of 2005, CHE and NATF again convened stakeholders. The purpose of this subsequent effort was to identify specific action strategies for addressing the 12 focus group observations, with an overarching goal of significantly improving MTI services and healthcare in Lincoln, Nebraska within the next 36 months. Eight action strategies were identified.
As part of this ambitious effort, we challenge the community to actively respond to the eight, consensus action strategies during the next 36 months.
