The Effects of Language and Economic Status on Healthcare Access and Care Partnership in Families of Children with Special Health Needs

Language barriers and low family income are known to have negative impacts on healthcare. Families of children with special health needs often require multiple health services and frequent interactions with health providers, leading to many potentially difficult situations in which linguistic and economic differences between the patientï¾’s family and the healthcare team impede positive health outcomes. This project used measures from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionï¾’s 2009-2010 National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs to visualize lack of access to various health services and their causes, as well as care partnership, or the level of involvement and empowerment these families felt in the healthcare setting. Respondents' answers were separated according to Supplemental Security Income (SSI) status, use of English in the home, and need for language interpreters in everyday and medical situations. Sankey diagrams depicting healthcare access were created and refined for the different respondent groups, and substantial lack of access areas for each group were identified. Statistically significant care partnership disparities between groups were assessed with bar charts, indexed means, and chi-squared tests. Results revealed that non-English, SSI families exhibited different healthcare access patterns compared to the other three groups, that dental care was the area of greatest need for all four groups, and that care partnership was more affected by language status than SSI status.