Providing patients with quality health care, helping people to change risky behavior patterns, and understanding the benefits of healthy living are all hallmarks of the kind of good practices health care professionals in the United States strive to achieve. Unfortunately, practitioners in this country also face many unique obstacles to the level of care they would like to deliver. Some of these obstacles involve cultural misunderstandings and miscommunications with patient populations whose languages, experiences, and backgrounds differ from those of their providers.

This primer is designed to help health care professionals better understand, and more effectively respond to the growing needs of over 30 million Hispanics in the United States. It should facilitate greater access to, and utilization of, health and human services for this patient population, as well as provide useful suggestions on improving one-to-one provider-patient interactions. The primer is a distillation of information health care providers may need to assure delivery of the best possible care to Hispanic clients in a variety of clinical, prevention, and social service settings.