What is it about?
Medical interpreters play an essential role in healthcare by helping patients and providers communicate across languages. However, interpreters are often exposed to emotionally difficult and traumatic conversations, such as discussions about abuse, severe illness, or death. Over time, these experiences can lead to secondary traumatic stress (STS), burnout, and emotional exhaustion. Despite these risks, most medical interpreter training programs do not include formal support or education on how to cope with these challenges. This article describes a collaboration between university researchers and a community organization in East Tennessee to integrate trauma-informed support into a Spanish–English medical interpreter training program. Using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, the team developed a three-part prevention model that included psychoeducation about STS, routine emotional well-being check-ins, and structured support groups for interpreters in training. The program also taught coping strategies, mindfulness skills, and “low-impact disclosure” techniques to help interpreters process difficult experiences in healthier ways.
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Why is it important?
This work is important because medical interpreters are often an overlooked part of healthcare systems, even though they are critical for language access, patient trust, and equitable care. Interpreters frequently work with immigrant and trauma-exposed communities, yet there are currently no universal standards or required supports addressing secondary traumatic stress in interpreter training programs. Our project highlights how community organizations and universities can work together to address real-world problems in culturally responsive and sustainable ways. The findings suggest that trauma-informed support may help interpreters feel more prepared, emotionally supported, and connected to mental health resources. This work is especially timely given the growing immigrant population in the United States and ongoing shortages of trained medical interpreters. Supporting interpreters’ well-being may not only improve workforce retention, but also strengthen patient care, communication, and health equity within healthcare systems.
Perspectives
One of the most meaningful aspects of this project was seeing how community-driven collaboration can create practical solutions to challenges that are often ignored within healthcare systems. Rather than researchers deciding what the community needed, the partnership emerged because the interpreter program identified a growing need to better support students exposed to traumatic experiences during their training. This project also reinforced the importance of approaching research with humility, flexibility, and reciprocity. Many community organizations have experienced extractive relationships with universities in the past, so building trust required ongoing commitment and genuine collaboration. As researchers and community partners, we learned that supporting interpreters’ mental health is not only about reducing stress, but also about recognizing their humanity and the critical role they play in advancing language justice and equitable healthcare. Although more research is needed to formally evaluate this intervention, we hope this work encourages other interpreter programs, healthcare systems, and researchers to prioritize trauma-informed support for interpreters and other frontline professionals.
Dr. Alejandro L. Vázquez
University of Tennessee Knoxville
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Community voices, collective solutions: Integrating secondary traumatic stress prevention into medical interpreter training using community-based participatory research, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, April 2026, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/s10865-026-00662-6.
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