Healthcare Plan To Focus On Koreans In Bayside

BAYSIDE, NY – A plan to improve healthcare access for Bayside's Korean community is being drawn up by the City Councilmember Paul Vallone.

Community leaders representing hospitals, churches and other resource centers joined the Democrat in his office Wednesday to spotlight language, cultural and financial barriers among the Asian American populations they serve and brainstorm how they could help demolish them.

The roundtable discussion was part of a four-year plan Vallone unveiled in October to connect Bayside's Korean community with other city groups and address Asian American concerns on a range of issues.

"We identified issues in the community – whether it was immigrant issues, small business issues, senior issues or mental health issues – whatever the Korean community was lacking, which was a lot," Vallone told Patch. "The more we spoke about topics and issues, the more this four-year plan grew."

The group aims to bring nonprofit assistance, youth networking and senior support that will help Asian Americans navigate such issues. In healthcare, the most challenging part is often communication, Vallone said.

"A lot of it was language issues because, even if they called 911, it was difficult to talk about their concerns on the phone to someone who couldn't speak Korean," Vallone said.

Other healthcare leaders at the meeting backed his claim with their own stories of patients or clients whose language barriers made it difficult to access proper care. Among them was Min Gder Chang, community health initiatives director of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

Chang said in the meeting that the language barrier makes it particularly difficult for Asian Americans to find mental health resources, since psychiatrists often aren't bilingual.

"It's not just the language," she said. "It's also that the background is hard to explain to them."

Asian Americans, like many immigrants coming from different parts of the world, often face cultural barriers when trying to find a doctor or psychiatrist in the area, Chang said. NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, based in Flushing, is working to change that by staffing more bilingual doctors and employees that are tasked to be culturally sensitive, she said.

The hospital is also equipped with interpreters and a bilingual patient advocate group.

"We do serve such a diverse population, so the house is really attuned to multicultural needs," Chang said. "Most departments have people who speak the five major languages."

The next step in Vallone's four-year plan is letting Bayside's Asian American community know these resources exist. Isabella Park, associate medical director at Northwell Health in Forest Hills, was one of many in the meeting to bring up the need for more outreach and education throughout the community.

"We know we can't just focus within the walls of the hospital," she said. "We need to expand out and work with local groups within the community."