What is it about?
This article is based on focus group interviews with native Dominicans living in a community in New Jersey to discover their experiences with professional health care providers and to find out what they do when they are sick, and what they do to stay healthy. The study was done using interpreters who gave the author the English meaning of the Spanish conversations. The interpreters were insiders in the Dominican culture, so they also helped the author to gain acceptance into the community and become trusted by the Dominican people who had lively conversations with the author to describe and compare their experiences from the Domincan Republic with life in the United States.
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Why is it important?
Researchers are reluctant to work with participants who speak a language that is different from that of the researcher. Therefore, people who move to the United States and speak their native language are rarely included in research studies aimed to identify and resolve their problems. This work expresses the voice of the Dominicans living in this community in the United States from their own perspective, which was expressed in their own words, in their native language. This study discovered information about the health beliefs of Dominican community that may not be well-known or well-understood by professional health care providers. Better understanding may help to build trust and relationships between health care provideers and the Dominican community to improve the quality of health care provided to them.
Perspectives
This study was carefully designed to protect the immigration status and identity of the Dominicans who participated in the focus groups. The Dominicans felt safe talking to the research team and spoke freely about their problems. I confirmed my findings with them to make sure that I was correctly representing their voice in the way that they wanted it to be heard. I also discovered the multiple roles of interpreters who can also be cultural brokers to assist in the research processs. I hope that other researchers will be motivated to work with native speaking populations after reading this article. I hope similar studies will be done with other migrant groups to get their voices into the literature. I am grateful to the humble Dominicans who took the time to teach me about themselves, and I hope that the knowledge gained from this study will be used to improve the quality of care for this community.
Constance Sobon Sensor
Rutgers The State University of New Jersey
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Health-Related Beliefs, Practices, and Experiences of Migrant Dominicans in the Northeastern United States, Journal of Transcultural Nursing, October 2018, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1043659618801967.
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