Linguistic diversity and emergency health alerts: A systematic critical review

Abstract:

Australia is a world leader in providing valuable resources that support multilingual access to healthcare services. However, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed that these resources are not always effective in ensuring that linguistically diverse citizens have access to information in a crisis. In this paper, we consider whether authorities around the world have implemented effective approaches that might be adapted to enhance multilingual communications in public health crises in the Australian context. Using a systematic literature review, we identify strategies implemented by governments and public health authorities to effectively support communication in a range of languages during public health emergencies. Four databases were searched and resulting studies analysed. We found that substantial bodies of the literature document the communication needs of culturally and linguistically diverse communities and the role of community and religious organisations in providing that support. However, there is almost no attention to the role that governments or public health authorities might play in implementing strategies to address those needs. Analysis of the studies suggests that public health authorities could benefit from working more collaboratively with community organisations to establish communication strategies that are timely, trustworthy, efficient and capable of cultural and linguistic nuance in public health emergencies.