MODESTO BEE
ORIGINAL ARTICLE

By TIM MORAN
BEE STAFF WRITER

Last Updated: October 15, 2005, 04:58:59 AM PDT

More than 1 in 5 women giving birth in California either don't speak English well or don't speak it at all, according to new information from the U.S. Census Bureau.
More than a third of the women giving birth in the state are not citizens, according to the American Community Survey done by the Census Bureau.

The information isn't broken down by county, but area hospitals say they hear several different languages from patients, and have programs in place to deal with translation issues.

The survey showed that California by far leads the nation in the maternity language barrier, with 20.6 percent of women giving birth not speaking English or not speaking it well. The next highest states were Texas and Arizona at 14.4 percent each.

The national average is 8.2 percent, according to the survey. The numbers are a four-year annual average from 2000 to 2003.

Stanislaus County health authorities don't keep statistics on languages spoken by patients, but about 35 percent of the women giving birth in the county over those same years were not born in the United States, according to the Health Services Agency.

"I think over the last few years we've been cognizant of the fact that we have a large number of non-English speaking residents," said Cleopathia Moore, associate director of the Health Services Agency.

"We have to gear up to meet their health care needs. How do we educate them and have more language capabilities in our health care services?" she asked.

The area's hospitals are working to meet that need and say the language barrier has not posed big problems.

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