Lori Tarke was 8 years old, sitting in a doctor’s office with her mother, when the doctor started talking.
Levels within normal limits. Glucose. Myocardial infarction.
Her mother, a Cuban exile who didn’t speak much English, turned to her daughter for help.
“Lori, what is that guy saying?” Tarke remembers her asking.
Tarke didn’t know either. She was in third grade.
“I’m like, Mommy, I’m trying to,” she said. “I’m struggling through this.”
Ask almost any child of immigrants, and they’ll have a version of that story: the parent-teacher conference, the bank, the landlord and, most often, the doctor. Kids end up as translators, advocates and go-betweens in rooms where the stakes are their parents’ health.
Bergen New Bridge Medical Center is trying to take those kids out of the middle.
In September, the Paramus hospital launched Puentes Nuevos de Salud (“New Bridges to Health”), a program that gives Hispanic and Latino patients and their families a dedicated point of entry into its care. It’s built around Spanish-speaking providers, help navigating the system, and connections to the services patients need, both inside the hospital and out.
Tarke, executive director of Seton Hall University’s Joseph A. Unanue Latino Institute, spoke at the launch. To her, the program is what her parents’ generation never had.
“This is our ancestors’ wildest dreams,” she said.
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For Bergen New Bridge CEO Deborah Visconi, the program is personal.
Visconi, who is Puerto Rican, started her career as a phlebotomist and worked her way up to running the state’s largest hospital. She said she got into health care because of what she saw growing up.
“It’s extra special because it really comes from my heart, from how I grew up, who I am as an individual, my background and my roots,” she said. “Not having access to culturally competent health care really was the motivating force for me to even get into health care and try to make that difference for the communities and people, especially that don’t speak the language and don’t know how to navigate health care.”
At the launch, Visconi said the goal is a place where Latino patients can “feel seen, heard, understood, and connected to the care they need.”
Navigating health care is hard enough when you understand it, she said. When you don’t, it can keep you away entirely.
Then she explained the name.
“What does a bridge do? It connects people,” she said. “It creates a path where one may not have existed before. It helps us get from where we are to where we want to be.”
Visconi couldn’t resist one more point.
“And come on, we’re Bergen New Bridge, right?” she said. “What name could be more perfect than that?”
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Dr. Elbia Toribio, the program’s medical director, sees what happens when there’s no bridge at all.
For many Latino patients, she said, getting care isn’t simple. Language, cultural concerns, a lack of insurance, not knowing where to go and the fear of not being understood all lead people to put off care, or skip it entirely.
The consequences are real, she said. High blood pressure that could have been managed turns into a stroke or a heart attack and a stay in the ICU. Diabetes goes untreated and leads to disability or amputation.
“Patients may wait until they are in crisis,” Toribio said. “Sometimes they come when we cannot do anything for them, when it’s too late.”
Puentes connects patients with preventive care, chronic disease management and behavioral health. It also links them with outside help: food, housing, shelter and medication.
But Toribio said the real work starts before any of that, with trust. And trust comes from understanding the patient, rice included.
Doctors often tell diabetic patients to cut out rice and bread, she said.
“But we are Latinos — we love rice,” she said.
So, Toribio negotiates. Smaller portions. A cup of rice, not a plateful. Her patients are happier, she said, and they stick with the plan.
“Some of the most important work begins before you even examine the patient or you diagnose the patient,” she said. “It begins when you connect with the patient.”
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Visconi said Puentes isn’t just about one patient. In many Latino households, three generations live under one roof, and the program is built to serve all of them.
“It’s a multi-generational approach to providing quality health care to everybody,” she said. “We are spanning from the elderly people, the people that are growing older, to the new younger people, to the children, so that everyone will have access to the same quality of care.”
Bergen County Commissioner Germaine Ortiz knows the stakes from her own family.
“As the daughter of Colombian immigrants, I understand firsthand how language and access can stand between a family and the care they need,” she said.
Amanda Medina-Forrester, executive director of the state Department of Health’s Office of Minority and Multicultural Health, said the program delivers what her office has long pushed for: language access, health literacy and “people that look like us serving us.”
Ortiz left the crowd with one request: Spread the word.
“Tell your tía, your neighbor, your coworker,” she said. “Tell the family down the street who’s been putting off the doctor’s visit. The best resource in the world only works if people know it’s here.”
For information about Bergen New Bridge’s Puentes Nuevos de Salud, go to newbridgehealth.org.
