St. Joseph Health Department has high hopes for expanded language interpreting services

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. (News-Press NOW) -- Starting next year, the St. Joseph Health Department will be updating its language interpreting services to assist the community.

St. Joseph City Councilmembers approved two resolutions Monday allowing the department to enter into contract agreements with Linguistica International, Inc. and International Language Center. The updated services will provide both video language and document translation services to assist patients in areas such as scheduling appointments and consultations with medical professionals.

The department selected two companies with the goal of having expanded options to assist a wide range of patients and situations. There have been times in the past when one agency does not have a specific language or dialect or staff available when another one will.

"We have a number of individuals who come to the health department for services where English is not their primary language," St. Joseph Health Department Director Debra Bradley said. "We contract with different agencies to help break down those language barriers. We want to ensure patients understand the services being received and for us to understand what services they're needing and requesting."

Language and document interpreting services will assist a number of health department programs, ranging from helping individuals seeking birth and death certificates, to immunizations and nutrition education through the Women, Infants and Children program, as well as others.

Getting the language services put in place was key before 2026, as the current service contracts were set to expire. On average the Health Department spends $20,000 to $30,000 on language services each year to help with patient communication and interpreting services.

"We currently have these services with different providers, but their contracts are ending at the end of the month," Bradley said. "We put it out bids to determine which agencies we were going to contract with. We got a number of responses and chose these two agencies to have options. Each agency has a different process on how we contact them, how they track the number of calls, the languages used etc."

The new provider services will go into effect on Jan. 2, 2026