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Orange County responds to health barriers for refugees - The Daily Tar Heel <br />http://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2018/04/refugees-0410[4/17/2018 11:58:43 AM] <br />EDITORS PICKS <br />Vice Chancellor for StudentAffairs Winston Crisp talks <br />new mental health task force <br />Hispanic community holdsforum to inform residents <br />following recent ICE <br />detainments <br />No. 1 North Carolinawomen's tennis team sweeps <br />two weekend ACC matches <br />The Refugee Support Center offers English as a Second Language classes and assistance with job <br />placement to help resettled refugees integrate smoothly into society. But one of their most successful <br />programs has been offering preparation for federal naturalization tests. <br />“Everyone who has regularly attended classes has passed their citizenship test,” Bateman said. <br />“With determination, help with access to information and a lot of luck, refugees can achieve the American <br />dream,” Bateman said. <br />Across town, Meagan Clawar is the program director for Refugee Community Partnership, a non-profit <br />aiming to minimize the linguistic and cultural barriers to health care access for refugee families by <br />partnering with residents through their Bridge Builder program. <br />“We have 70 refugee families partnered with volunteers," Clawar said. "The families and volunteers work <br />on goals that the family identifies. It’s really a pretty holistic approach to providing services.” <br />Clawar said language is one of the major barriers to refugee health care. <br />“Communicating with someone over the phone about something very personal like your health can be <br />frustrating,” Clawar said. “You aren’t provided with a telephonic interpreter until you are actually in the <br />exam room, so they often have to navigate check-in and any paperwork on their own.” <br />While many refugees from Burma natively speak a language known as “Karen,” many doctor providers <br />mistakenly hear this as “Korean." In this situation, a refugee parent who speaks Karen is trying to <br />communicate with an English-speaking doctor through a translator who speaks Korean. <br />“I've had a call from a family saying, ‘The baby is really sick; she needs to go to the hospital.’ So, I went <br />with them, and we waited through triage and went through the process with them.” <br />In addition to assistance in accessing health services, the Refugee Community Partnership provides