Mental Health Highlighted by Language Access Advocates

WASHINGTON - April 19, 2018 - PRLog -- Mental health will be the topic of a keynote presentation at a national gathering of language access advocates to be held in Denver, Colorado on June 1-2, 2018.  As part of the National Council on Interpreting in Health Care's (NCIHC) Annual Membership Meeting (AMM), DJ Ida, Executive Director of the National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association, will discuss the role of cultural competence in mental health interpreting.

Dr. Ida holds a doctorate in clinical psychology and has more than 35 years of experience working with Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities.  She was invited to the first White House Conference on Mental Health in 1999 and served as a peer reviewer for Mental Health: Culture, Race and Ethnicity: A Report of the Surgeon General. Dr. Ida also served on the boards of the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Center for Mental Health Services, Mental Health America, Annapolis Coalition on Behavioral Health Workforce, UC Davis School of Medicine Center for Eliminating Health Disparities, and the National Coalition of Asian Pacific Americans.

"We are honored that Dr. Ida will be joining us to speak on this critically important topic.  Mental health is an issue that deserves far more attention than it is given, and among refugee and immigrant communities the ongoing stigma related to mental health makes this all the timelier," according to Enrica Ardemagni, President of the NCIHC.

"Dr. Ida's work with the National Latino Behavioral Health Association to develop a mental health interpreter training curriculum that also incorporates the role of culture in mental health will, no doubt, also be at the forefront of the discussion.  While there are no standards for mental health interpreting, the curriculum provides an excellent framework for the key elements of practice in this field."

Recently Dr. Ida was the recipient of the first Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Award for Health Equity.

To learn more about #NCIHC2018, go to http://www.ncihc.org/2018-membership-meeting.