Building Response Capacity: The Need for Universally Available Language Services

In this chapter, we discuss how the size and composition of the foreign-born Latino population and its dispersion throughout the United States create difficulties in the navigation of complex mental health and health care systems, yielding unfortunate consequences for individuals, their families, and communities. Given the challenges posed by the increasing number of people needing linguistically accessible services and the lack of a bilingual workforce, we use the idea of “building response capacity” as the central theme for this chapter. We argue that such a capacity must be multifaceted and grounded on demographic trends, sound social policy, and the institutional, cultural, and social context of health care delivery.