By Michael Blanding
As the manager of interpreter services at Boston Children’s Hospital, Luciana Canestraro, MHA ’24, has witnessed firsthand the intensified mental health challenges children face in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of the increased demand for services, children often come to the emergency department (ED) and then wait days for a psych placement. “It’s a silent crisis,” she says.
After working at Children’s for 16 years, Canestraro came to Suffolk to pursue a Master’s of Healthcare Administration degree. In a course on health systems, she decided to write a policy brief on pediatric behavioral health, making recommendations including more preventive care, specialized support in the ED, and outpatient services embedded in schools.
While she couldn’t institute those systemwide changes herself, she decided to tackle the issue in her department, proposing a proactive approach to interpretation for non-English-speaking pediatric patients boarding while waiting for a placement. Instead of waiting to be called for services, or have the staff resort to video or phone interpretation that isn’t appropriate for mental health, she sent interpreters to round the emergency department to ask what patients needed. That’s crucial for behavioral health patients in that setting, Canestraro says—because of cultural barriers, they may not ask for an interpreter themselves.
“We don’t have control over how fast they leave the ED,” Canestraro says. “But we do have control over how comfortable they are in terms of meeting their needs for language access and culturally sensitive care.” Over time, she says, the change has led to an improvement in how her department is able to meet the needs of diverse patients. “Just by digging deeper, I was able to have an impact.”
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Photograph by Adam DeTour
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