Cultural Competence | The Jerusalem Intercultural Center

Culturally Competent Health Care during the Coronavirus Crisis

Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, we at the JICC’s Cultural Competency Desk are thinking about the multitude of communications challenges that require drastic changes in the way we utilize health services.

Cultural Competency Coordinators share experiences during coronavirus crisis

It’s not obvious that everyone can use health services via phone or Zoom. It’s not obvious that everyone knows and understands the health guidelines, even though they’re all over the media. It’s not obvious that someone who needs urgent medical care (especially not related to COVID-19) will seek it at this time. It’s not obvious that a hospitalized person will fully recover, if he doesn’t have extended family to support him. So much new uncertainty that has been added to the general state of uncertainty, which challenges the cross-cultural meeting even more.

On May 5, 2020 we held a professional development meeting (via Zoom, of course), led by our Dr. Michal Schuster, to try to explore these questions and issues, and to examine opportunities and existing responses that will help us overcome these challenges.

There were 30 healthcare professionals from all disciplines and all areas of the healthcare system, as well as those from professional schools for health care. They spoke about the challenges, as well as creative solutions that they’ve used. They shared their insights and original initiatives and noted the importance of cultural competency and adapting the medical response to diverse populations in a situation where the absurd has become the new normal.

One initiative was a “Zoom kiosk” for the ultra-Orthodox who didn’t want to use the Internet at home but needed to receive guidance or participate in different medical committees through Zoom; explanatory videos for populations who have difficulty reading technical documents; a voicemail-based service that made guidelines accessible for those without digital devices; and even purchasing tablets and providing training to connect patients relatives who are unable to visit due to strict guidelines.

This was all so amazing and exciting work, which already shows that while this is an extremely challenging era, it also offers opportunities for innovation and creative thinking, and many of the initiatives should remain with us to provide the best possible response, even after we return to routine. In the end, communication is communication, and caring professionals will find new ways to provide care and services.

We summed up the meeting with a range of practical and conceptual tips and recommendations, and invited all to consult with us further.

One participant noted, “Thank you for allowing me to participate in this amazing meeting, very exciting work.”

Here’s the Facebook post by Racheli Ashwal:

Here’s a Facebook post by our Michal Schuster:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their strategic support of Cultural Competency over the past decade.

Naomi Roff2020-05-31T15:26:53+00:00May 12th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services|

Remote Medical Interpretation during the Coronavirus Crisis

Today’s world of coronavirus has, on the one hand, brought health care front and center. On the other hand, it has raised numerous new challenges, such as in the world of interpreting, especially – but not only – in medical interpreting.

The world of interpreting (oral translation) is undergoing significant changes during this period. Interpreters in meetings and conferences need to adapt to new conditions, such as the fact that they’re not in the same room or hall as the participants. They also do not always have the appropriate technical equipment to translate without interruption – sometime there is an unstable Internet connection, sometimes they need to translate to multiple participants, some of whom have background noise. In general – the overall uncertainty of this entire situation has upended the norms we had been used to.

Zoom on remote interpreting

Medical interpretation has faced significant challenges in Corona times. Since caregivers must provide urgent care to a broad range of communities, medical interpreters are more essential than ever. However, because of the rapid changes in healthcare provision – both for “regular” patients as well as for those with the coronavirus – many problems arise. For example, according to this recent report from the United States, in some cases, minorities who do not speak English receive misinformation or no information at all because there is no easy and available way to communicate with them through translation. In other cases, medical interpreters are exposed to infection because they do not receive minimal personal protective equipment (PPE) such as face masks. Many healthcare services did not prepare in time to provide remote interpretation services, and caregivers are not trained in using telephone or video interpretation.

At the same time, many interpreters are at home, some of them losing their jobs because they were mainly engaged in face-to face interpretation. Alongside the many difficulties, this situation can also be a great opportunity for learning and professional development. In recent weeks there have been numerous webinars about remote interpretation and we decided to be the first to discuss it in Israel.

Over 30 people in meeting

This week we held a special Zoom meeting on “Remote Interpretation during the Corona Period.” At the meeting, we presented the benefits and challenges of remote interpretation (which existed only in healthcare in Israel before the crisis), technology infrastructure necessary for remote interpretation, and tips for entering the field for interpreters who had not performed this kind of interpreting before. More than 30 interpreters: graduates of our medical interpreting courses, freelance interpreters, and students, participated.

Among the participants were representatives of the Tene Briut organization, which operates Voice for Health, the first telephone medical interpreting service in Israel. Iris Malako, a medical interpreter who was a former cultural mediator, presented the difference between face-to-face interpreting, cultural mediation, and telephone interpreting. Remote interpreting is more complex emotionally, technically, and from a communication standpoint, but it does have many benefits – it is immediate, focused, and there is more anonymity for the patient (which is why patients from a small community like Ethiopian-Israelis are happy to use it when discussing sensitive issues).

Iris Malako and Ilan Yavor, a Hebrew-English conference interpreter, helped us illustrate simultaneous remote interpreting, and we introduced several other technology infrastructures that allow freelance interpreters to provide this service from home.

The response to the meeting was excellent, and we hope it will encourage interpreters to learn more about remote interpreting now, and for the future, and broaden their professional skills.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its continued support of cultural competency in Jerusalem.

rachelly2020-05-16T05:59:23+00:00May 1st, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services|

Santé Israël – Continuing to Help French Speakers Deal with Israeli Medical System during COVID-19

We reported here and here about how Santé Israël has been helping French-speakers in Israel deal with the COVID-19 crisis. As the crisis develops, so do Santé Israël’s responses.

In addition to updating the Facebook page often (here’s one of the most recent posts):

Marie, Santé Israël’s Coordinator, answers questions individually from a range of visitors and residents regarding Israel’s health system – where to go, for those who take medication regularly, what types of medications are equivalent to types taken in France, and other questions. Thus far, she’s answered some 40 queries relating to the COVID-19 crisis.

In addition, she has updated the Santé Israël web site, adding a page about the different HMO’s and their policies regarding how to purchase medications without leaving home. Here’s the page that was added. You can also see it via this link:

Medication home delivery according to different HMO’s

In addition, Marie developed a WhatsApp group for French-speaking community professionals – for staff from community centers and welfare offices, local immigrant absorption coordinators, HMO staff, relevant NGO’s such as Magen David Adom and Qualita (the organization for French-speaking Olim), and more. There are currently 25 participants in this WhatsApp group.

Many thanks to the Pharmadom Foundation for their continued support of Santé Israël over the years. Wishing health and safety to all!

Naomi Roff2020-05-02T09:13:13+00:00April 17th, 2020|Blog, Santé Israël - French internet platform on the Israeli healthcare system|

Cultural Competency Holiday Updates Continue

It’s been more than six years since we began publishing our Holiday Information Sheets. They’ve evolved from being directed at staff in health care to being adapted to employees and staff in a range of public capacities. The updates provide basic information about the different holidays and commemorations. They aim to help different organizations operate during these times, enabling both staff and beneficiaries (whichever is appropriate) to best mark them in meaningful ways. Over the years we’ve received a great deal of feedback from a wide range of organizations, telling us how much these updates have helped them.

Information on Prophet Muhammad ascension to heaven

Amid the COVID-19 crisis and its resulting upheavals, we continue to update and distribute the Holiday Information Sheets. This time late-March – April is full of holidays – the Christian Easter, the Jewish Passover, and this year, the day on the Muslim calendar that commemorates the Prophet Muhammad’s ascension to heaven.

Easter information sheet

These new information sheets are targeted at businesses and companies that are focusing on diversity and inclusions, especially around different holidays – how to commemorate them and how employees commemorate them, social and political tensions associated with them, and more.

Passover information sheet

Here’s the Facebook post by Cultural Competency Desk Director, Orna Shani-Golan:

And the Facebook post about Passover and Easter:

And about the Druze holiday of Nabi al-Shuaib celebration:

You can browse all the Holiday Information Sheets on the JICC web site here.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its continued support of cultural competency in Jerusalem.

Naomi Roff2020-04-18T13:59:18+00:00April 13th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence|

Santé Israël Showing its Importance throughout the Coronavirus Crisis

We wrote here earlier this month about how Santé Israël is helping to respond to the Coronavirus crisis in Israel.

Photo Credit: Israeli Ministry of Health site

And of course, it continues to do so. Its Facebook page continues to provide updates in French on an almost daily basis. For example, it carries updates from the Ministry of Health as its directives are made more and more stringent.

Or about new updates about products that should – or shouldn’t – be used:

It also publishes information on the ‘side effects’ of shelter in place and lockdown directives, such as notifications of the Legal Aid Department of the Department of Justice:

There is a special page on the Santé Israël web site about the cornavirus and is updated as the Ministry of Health updates its directives.

Sante Israel page on corona information

t is important to point out that the information is from the Ministry of Health and official ‘what to do’ scenarios; it doesn’t carry medical information about the virus. We found that there’s enough of that online.

This has proven to be a particularly important service at this time. While the French-speaking population has been particularly affected by the outbreak, the Ministry of Health has yet to translate all its instructions into French (to its credit, it does translate into Arabic, English, Russian, and Amharic). That is where we – and Sante Israel – is picking up the slack. Kol Hakavod to Santé Israël on the quick and accurate information.

Many thanks to the Pharmadom Foundation for their continued support of Santé Israël over the years. Wishing health and safety to all!

Naomi Roff2020-04-18T13:37:43+00:00April 10th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Santé Israël - French internet platform on the Israeli healthcare system|

Diversity Management Workshop in Mental Health – for Kfar Shaul

This isn’t the first time we’ve worked with the Jerusalem Mental Health Center at Kfar Shaul, and with practitioners in mental health. You can read more about our previous work here and here.

On February 24, 2020 we began a series of four workshops, together with the Jerusalem Mental Health Center at Kfar Shaul, led by our Orna Shani-Golan and Michal Schuster.

אורנה שני פותחת את סדנת ניהול הגיוון בכפר שאול

Orna Shani-Golan at the first meeting of the Diversity Management Workshop in Mental Health – for Kfar Shaul

In these four sessions, we’ll share knowledge, tools, skills, and we’ll hold deep discussions about the implications of diversity and how to include all the identities represented in the organization in its activities.

In the first session, we introduced the principles of cultural competency to the different types of caregivers, administrators, and human resources department, and discussed how they can be used to guide effective responses for the patients, taking into consideration the cultural backgrounds of both patients and staff, which come from a variety of backgrounds. Participants were asked to choose one thing that they’d like to change in order to advance cultural competency at Kfar Shaul, and we’ll help them see it through.

Here’s Rachely’s Hebrew post from the first workshop in late February:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its continued support of Cultural Competency since its inception in 2008.

rachelly2020-04-11T14:42:15+00:00March 20th, 2020|Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services|

Another Step in Assimilating Principles of Cultural Competency in the Jerusalem Municipality’s Welfare Department

We’re continuing our efforts to assimilate cultural competence in the municipal welfare department in Jerusalem. We’re concentrating on the western region of Jerusalem, which covers a large and diverse area – from Haredi Har Nof and Bayit Vagan to Beit Hakerem, which is considered a secular neighborhood, to Kiryat Hayovel, which includes a highly diverse population of Haredim and secular communities, to the city center, which also includes a broad spectrum of communities, including asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea.

The Forum facilitatorד at the JICC

The meetings included discussions with the regional director. She is in charge of the welfare offices, the rehabilitation centers, and the training centers. She spoke about the activities of the different professional forums. At each monthly meeting, all professionals from the different neighborhoods meet to discuss the same issue. For example, there are forums that deal with aging, violence, families, authority, eligibility, youth, disabilities and more …

Each forum is accompanied by the forum coordinator and a facilitator, both of them social workers at one of the regional offices. At these meetings, they raise professional dilemmas related to their meetings with clients and the other employees in the region. We decided that this is an ideal forum to advance cultural competency – if each session would also include intercultural aspects that emerging from the cases they bring up they could better assimilate concepts of cultural competency in the different welfare offices and associated centers.

talking about cultural competence with the social workers

The first phase of the process was conducted at the Jerusalem Intercultural Center. At that meeting, held on December 22, 19, all forums and forum coordinators were given tools to examine case studies, raised by the participants from different forums, from a cultural competence standpoint. One of the tools is the three-question model developed at the JICC:

What are the possible interpretations? What possible cultural mores does it touch on?
Have you experienced a similar incident before? How did you act then?
What would you suggest to do at the event presented?

Since then, we’ve worked with them in a number of steps. The second step was work with the forums themselves. Preparatory meetings were held with the director and facilitator of the forum in which they design a meeting with joint facilitation. The third stage is the meeting with the forum itself. So far, we have met with the Authority Forum – employees of the Welfare Department, who are not social workers and who accompany and assist families in various areas. We spoke with them about their ability to be go-betweens, providing social workers with important cultural information on the one hand and those requesting assistance on the other. Another meeting was held with the Eligibility Workers Forum, which is responsible for subsidizing activities and providing assistance to eligible offices. One of the issues raised in the meeting was how to deal with a person who comes thinking that he deserves assistance (after receiving incorrect information from his friends), but in fact is not eligible according to the guidelines, and how our culture meets (and deals with) that of the person who is asking for assistance. Additional meetings have been scheduled with the Social Workers for the Elderly Forum, and the Family Social Workers Forum.

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their continued support of cultural competency in Jerusalem since its inception over a decade ago.

orna2020-04-18T13:23:03+00:00March 15th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Jerusalem Municipality|

JICC Cross-Pollination – Living Safer, Living Longer and Cultural Competence Training at Sha’re Zedek

We continue to hold Cultural Competence meetings for workers at Sha’are Zedek Medical Center. You can read more about our work with Sha’are Zedek here, here and here.

The hospital continues to provide professional enrichment to those who went through our medical interpretation course. These employees speak a range of languages, including Arabic, Russian, Amharic and French. This time, the enrichment covered preventive health and home safety. Our Aliza Shabo-Hayut, Director of our Living Safer, Living Longer project, gave the lecture.

Learning about preventive health and home safety measures

Living Safer, Living Longer seeks to reduce one of the largest problems in preventive health and home safety – procrastination. We know it’s important to perform periodic examinations and tests for the early detection of different illnesses – periodic examinations by the family doctor, mammograms for women, tests for colon cancer, and more. But the daily hustle and bustle of work and family often get in the way, as do personal and cultural fears. This leads to missing opportunities for detecting serious illnesses early. As part of the presentation, Aliza and the participants shared personal stories of early detection, which saved lives – routine skin examination, detecting of a lump in the breast and more. We hope that the employees will use this information to promote their own health and that of their family members, and serve as ambassadors for preventive health and home safety.

Learning terms, learning about tests

Afterward, we held a practice exercise related to interpretation. The participants learned about the advantages of working on online documents (such as Google Docs), where a number of people can upload and update terms for translation at the same time, to the same document. The translation instructors will review the terms translated on the document so that an accurate, up-to-date and professional file of health-related terms – for children as well as adults – can be created.

We were also happy to see that the hospital felt that the interpreters’ visibility was important as well – new tags have been made for them to use when translating! This is how we advance professional medical interpreting, showing that medical interpreting is indeed an added skill, and not everyone can translate. Well done to the hospital management.

New tags in languages they need

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for their continued support for Cultural Competence in Jerusalem for more than 10 years.

Naomi Roff2020-04-18T13:39:28+00:00March 11th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Health Services, Living Safer Living Longer|

The Jerusalem Intercultural Center – Hosting Bar Ilan’s Israeli Hope in Academia Diversity Forum

The Israeli Hope in Academia is one of President Reuven Rivlin’s initiatives to promote diversity and cultural competence in Israeli society. Although the president’s vision focuses on “four tribes” – four groups in Israeli society that will be prominent in formulating its future (Arabs, secular, religious-national and ultra-Orthodox Jews), but conceptually, this vision is very close to that of the JICC and its work to promote cultural competence in Israel.

Introducing the JICC’s work in cultural competency

Part of the work of the Israeli Hope in Academia at Bar Ilan University, led by Dr. Liat Netzer, includes activities to promote leadership within the university. The Gvanim (“Diversity”) group is a group of senior academic and administrative staff selected to promote cultural competence within the university. Our own Dr. Michal Schuster is part of this group.

Mount Zion as an example to cultural competence and diversity

On February 26, 2020, the JICC hosted this group at its offices on Mount Zion. They began their day at the Jerusalem Intercultural Center with an introduction to the topic of cultural competence. Dr. Hagai Agmon Snir, our Director (and lecturer at the Louis & Gabi Weisfeld School of Social Work at Bar-Ilan) presented cultural competency and the diverse activities at the JICC over the past 12 years. Dr. Netzer connected the concept of cultural competence to the mission of Israeli Hope in Academia, and showed thought-provoking examples of the academia’s blindness to student diversity, barriers to students and lecturers from minority groups to advance and integrate as equals in the system, and the motivations to improve the diversity and cultural competence of academic institutions in Israel.

Taking lessons from Mount Zion to academia

Afterward, the group toured Mount Zion, guided by Merav Horowitz, Coordinator of the Window to Mount Zion project. The tour illustrated how partnerships between people and organizations (sometimes those who do not hold official roles) succeeded in bridging disagreements and tensions in a place that is small but holds religious, political, and cultural importance to many, many groups. She described numerous examples of cooperation at the David’s Tomb complex, the Dajani family cemetery, and various events that take place on Mount Zion, sometimes routine and sometimes as surprises.

After the tour, the group met to raise questions and insights about the JICC’s work and how it can be applied to academia.

We were happy to host the Diversity group and to be part of the process of formulating and raising ideas to enhance cultural competency at Bar-Ilan University.

Dr. Rachely Ashwal, a lecturer on mediation at Bar Ilan (and who will replace Orna on her upcoming maternity leave) who is also posted about it on her Facebook page:

Many thanks to the Jerusalem Foundation for its support of Cultural Competency since its inception.

Naomi Roff2020-04-18T13:07:32+00:00March 8th, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Cultural Competence in Academic Institutions, Mount Zion|

Santé Israël Raising Awareness about Coronavirus for French Speakers in Israel

The coronavirus – its spread, possible cases in Israel and what to do if you’ve visited certain countries or been at different sites at certain times – is at the top of Israel’s news headlines these days.

Photo Credit: Israeli Ministry of Health site

Santé Israël has been getting the word out to French speakers around Israel.

It has translated directives from the Israel Ministry of Health, and published updates since its outbreak a few months ago. This post, from January 30, was among the first giving instructions in French:

It is important to note that the information doesn’t include medical / scientific information about the virus itself. We’ve found that there is plenty of information about the virus in French online. The goal of this awareness campaign is to make sure that as much information as possible that is issued by Israeli authorities is also available in French. Here’s one of the earlier announcements:

And one of the later announcements:

And the latest post:

In addition, Santé Israël has added the latest information to its web site.

Many thanks to the Pharmadom Foundation for their continued support of Santé Israël over the years. Wishing health and safety to all!

Naomi Roff2020-03-21T14:41:47+00:00March 3rd, 2020|Blog, Cultural Competence, Santé Israël - French internet platform on the Israeli healthcare system|