Language is central to human identity, connection, and belonging. Despite this, English dominance across institutions leaves many without equitable access to essential information and services. In response, the Public Health Alliance of Southern California piloted its Language Justice Spectrum, a ground-breaking tool for local health jurisdictions to evaluate and transform language services alongside community partners. 

The Challenge: Meeting the Linguistics Needs of Communities

Local health jurisdictions (LHJs) are responsible for protecting and promoting the health of their communities. Yet language barriers persist, limiting their ability to meet the diverse linguistic needs of all residents and visitors, ultimately deepening health inequities. In California, this is especially critical, as one in five residents identify as limited English-speaking, reflecting the state’s vast linguistic diversity (American Community Survey, Table C16001). Furthermore, current federal priorities and legal enforcement have heightened language barriers for immigrant, migrant, and refugee communities, limiting access to vital public health information such as vaccine guidance and emergency management updates. This underscores the need for jurisdictions to work closely with communities to identify language and communication needs and ensure that related services are timely, accurate, and culturally relevant. To achieve health equity, public health services must move beyond basic language access, resource availability, and compliance toward language justice. Language justice acknowledges pervasive systemic inequities and power imbalances that have long favored dominant English speakers over those who communicate in other languages. This calls on LHJs to transform their systems and services so that power, knowledge, and care are shared across language and every community can engage in and shape the decisions that affect their health. 

New Tool Developed to Improve Language Services

To address the above needs, the Public Health Alliance developed, piloted, and tested the effectiveness of the Spectrum tool to support LHJs in working with their community partners to evaluate and improve language services. Co-created with LHJs and community partners, the tool brings together internal LHJ teams to assess language services across eight different domains, guiding departments in advancing from access toward justice. This focus not only reflects legal requirements set forth by the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the California’s Dymally-Alatorre Bilingual Services Act, and several local and organizational policies, but also supports LHJs in viewing access as the foundation to build toward services that truly uplift dignity and belonging. The virtual pilot aimed to: (1) determine the tool’s effectiveness in identifying gaps and strengths, and (2) validate the tool as a resource for LHJs. In early 2025, six health jurisdictions across Southern California participated. Jurisdictions were selected to ensure diverse geographic representation, including both those serving densely populated urban areas and more rural communities. Additionally, each LHJ was asked to invite a community-based organization (CBO) to engage in strategic discussions about the assessment results and begin to identify and set language service priorities. 

Advancing Language Justice for Meaningful Engagement

Mid-pilot feedback and post-survey results indicated strong support for the tool’s effectiveness, affirming its utility in helping LHJs evaluate language services and validating it as a cornerstone resource for LHJs advancing language justice. 100% of participants noted that the tool was easy to navigate and understand. Additionally, participant reflections revealed that the tool sparked critical conversations amongst staff about the importance of language justice and helped reframe equitable language services as a public health priority. Additionally, there was increased awareness of the range of community language needs among participants. For example, the tool revealed that while some departments have invested in Spanish language services, opportunities exist to close gaps for deaf and hard-of-hearing communities, communities that speak dialects, and other groups whose needs might be obscured without disaggregated data. 

A key goal was to evaluate the tool’s ability to create meaningful dialogue between LHJs and their community partners. However, not all participating LHJs were able to collaborate with a CBO during the priority setting stage. Contributing factors included funding and administrative priority changes that affected both LHJs and their CBO partners’ operations, staffing, and capacity. Some CBOs also had limited capacity as they were rapidly responding to mounting attacks on multilingual and immigrant communities. 

LHJs must uplift language justice as a priority and address competing priorities, perceptions that language access is optional rather than mission-critical, or limited understanding of language equity and its impact on community health. The pilot presented a key opportunity to advance this work, establishing language justice as crucial to protecting and promoting community health. Moreover, the pilot’s success was driven by participants who were staunch language advocates, bringing a fluency and confidence that enabled them to engage in the process and connect with their colleagues. Importantly, participants found that staff initially unfamiliar with language justice were quickly able to become more familiar and recognize its importance using the tool as a conversation builder. This shows that the Spectrum is not only an assessment tool, but also a catalyst for learning and organizational change. The pilot also surfaced key strategies and conditions that supported participants in assessing their organization. Success strategies included establishing clear processes for data collection and score selection, including leadership or executive-level staff in the scoring process, and ensuring diverse representation across internal teams to capture the full depth and breadth of available services. Next steps will include implementing pilot feedback and scaling for future work.

For more information: 
https://www.thepublichealthalliance.org/language-justice 

https://youtu.be/5usaweC3WZE